Editorial: Microbial Stress Responses: Antioxidants, the Plasma Membrane, and Beyond

Over the past decade, our understanding of the mechanisms involved in microbial responses to stressful environmental conditions have expanded greatly. We are now able to observe both microbial toxicity sensing and microbial adaptations to environmental perturbation. During stressful situations, such as extremes in pH, temperature, humidity and pressure, the microbial cell membrane is always the first target both in bacteria and fungi (Guan and Liu, 2020; Lanze et al., 2020). As the activities of cell membranes are crucial in the functioning of all cells, it is essential to study them during periods of stress, in particular, how the functioning of ATPases is disturbed, whether changes are observed in cation uptake or if membrane potentials are drastically altered. Emerging technologies, such as transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, lipidomics and glycomics, can help us to understand the molecular mechanisms that interplay within the cell membrane during microbial exposure to stressful conditions. Investigation into aspects of the cell membrane, such as membrane raft structure characterization, ion homeostasis, and the role of ion transporters and antioxidants could shed valuable light on the holistic microbial response to stress. Frontiers in Microbiology took initiative in bringing out a special issue on this cutting-edge theme. In this Research Topic we collected 1 review and 9 original research articles which combined give an overview on the current status of this field.