However, low glucose levels appear to be necessary for metabolic cycling. Factors such as H2S, acetaldehyde and ethanol have been implicated in the establishment of synchrony in yeast cells, and they or other as yet unidentified factors may be important for setting or maintaining the YMC. These studies also suggest the suite of OX phase genes are expressed at higher levels during log phase growth, while the expression of RC phase genes is repressed or minimal. Consistent with this idea, many RC phase gene products are present at very few molecules per cell in log phase. The suite of RC phase genes may be induced upon entry into stationary phase as CHIR-99021 growth rate slows. We predict the RC gene expression program functions to enhance cell survivability and that sufficiently low glucose conditions are capable of inducing this program. In both cases, and for three different reporter sets, the results were largely similar. Interestingly, these results appeared different from those we had observed in cells undergoing metabolic cycles. In the cells grown to stationary phase under typical batch culture conditions, the overall expression of RC phase reporters increased slightly over time but remained very low. This is in contrast to our description of the cells in the RC phase where we observed more significant expression of the RC phase reporters, representing numerous genes that are known to enable stringent protein quality control processes and enhance cell survival under various stresses. Furthermore, the RB phase cell cycle reporter, which is strongly expressed in cells in the log phase in high glucose concentrations showed only a low/basal expression in these stationary phase quiescent cells in this duration of time. Thus, cells in the RC phase appear to be in a state where they undergo extensive cellular quality control processes that actively prepare the cells to become “primed” for another round of cell division. It is possible that the RC phase can be likened to “early stationary phase”, where cells are adapting to nutrient and starvation stresses but remain primed towards entering growth under favorable conditions, and that upon prolonged incubation of cells in depleted media gene expression is drastically reduced as they enter a more dormant state. Indeed, cells in extended starvation/stationary phase exhibit very low rates of transcription and translation. We speculate that the RC phase is a state where cells induce a gene expression program to maximize survivability under nutrientpoor conditions and further prepares cells for regrowth once conditions improve. This would enable the cells to continue to persist in the most optimum manner possible under stringent conditions. We also speculate that it is in the RC or early OX phase that key decisions for the community, such as which cells will divide and which will not, are made. In more ways than one the RC phase appears to be biologically interesting and complex, and future studies will reveal the logic of the cellular processes and activities.