What is the link between stringent response, endoribonuclease encoding Type II Toxin-Antitoxin systems and persistence?

Persistence is a transient and non-inheritable tolerance to antibiotics by a small fraction of a bacterial population. One of the proposed determinants of bacterial persistence is Toxin-Antitoxin systems (TAS) which are also implicated in a wide range of stress-related phenomena. In a report (Maisonneuve E, Castro-Camargo M, Gerdes K. 2013. Cell 154:1140-1150) an interesting link between ppGpp mediated stringent response, TAS and persistence was proposed. It is proposed that accumulation of ppGpp enhances the accumulation of inorganic polyphosphate which modulates Lon protease to degrade antitoxins. The decrease in the concentration of antitoxins supposedly activated the toxin to increase in