Evolutionary Conservation of Dormancy Mechanisms Across the Tree of Life

Dormancy has evolved independently across nearly every major branch of life, allowing organisms to survive prolonged periods of environmental stress through states such as diapause, hibernation, quiescence, anhydrobiosis, seed dormancy, and microbial persistence. Although these phenomena are traditionally studied within separate biological disciplines, many involve overlapping molecular processes including metabolic suppression, stress response signaling, chromatin remodeling, proteostasis, and cellular maintenance. Whether these shared mechanisms represent examples of convergent evolution or reflect deeply conserved biological programs remains unresolved. The literature is extensive but highly fragmented, with reviews typically focusing on individual taxa or specific forms of dormancy rather than synthesizing evidence across kingdoms. This project asks whether fundamentally different forms of biological dormancy rely on a common set of conserved molecular pathways despite their independent evolutionary origins. The literature review will examine studies spanning plants, fungi, bacteria, invertebrates, vertebrates, and extremophiles while comparing the regulatory networks governing entry into dormancy, maintenance of low metabolic activity, and subsequent reactivation. Particular emphasis will be placed on identifying recurring genetic pathways, signaling molecules, and physiological adaptations reported across diverse organisms. The group will synthesize findings from molecular biology, evolutionary genetics, comparative physiology, and genomics to determine whether existing evidence supports a unified framework for biological dormancy or instead points toward multiple independent evolutionary solutions. By integrating literature that is rarely discussed together, the review aims to provide one of the most comprehensive comparative accounts of dormancy mechanisms across the tree of life while identifying key unanswered questions that could guide future experimental research.