Frontiers in Microbiology Research Topic "Microbial Stress: From Sensing to Intracellular and Population Responses"

Microorganism have the genomic and metabolic plasticity to adapt to the many stressful conditions they encounter during their life. They provide a remarkable example of adaptation to the most diverse environments. Understanding how microorganisms respond to stress conditions and, on the other hand, what causes them to succumb under some circumstances is an exciting field, with many aspects remaining to be fully explored, both at the system and molecular levels. There is still much to learn on how pathogens respond to host-imposed stresses, how environmental microorganisms adapt so efficiently to the constantly changing environments, how metabolic changes eventually shape their genome and how all the above can be exploited to our benefit, i.e. preventing food spoilage, improving food safety, performing industrial syntheses with minimal or no pollution. In addition, shedding light on fundamental aspects of microbial responses to stress can have practical ramifications in unrelated fields, for example in the cure of human diseases, as often the logic in life has common themes! This Research Topic aims to cover several aspects of the microbial response to stress from the different perspective of microbiologists, biotechnologists, geneticists, system biologists, biochemists and structural and molecular biologists, from both academia and the private sector working in fundamental and applied research. We wish to publish contributions that tackle the biological questions by employing established scientific approaches, as well as new technologies and approaches, which can be relevant across organisms and sectors. Ideally, though not exclusively, the contributions to this Research Topic should arise from the interest around the topics dealt in the Microbial Stress Meeting, which will be held in Kinsale, Cork (Ireland) from 23rd to 25th April 2018. With this meeting the Conference Chairs (also Topic Editors) are aiming to gather scientists around the common theme of Microbial Stress. The goal is also to provide a strong interdisciplinary environment that will provide a forum for the circulation of new ideas for better understanding microbial physiology under stress. Keywords: Stress defense mechanisms, Stress response networks, Sensing environmental cues, stress at the single cell level, microbial stress at production leve