systems. Abortive initiation (Abi) can also happen without toxin-antitoxin systems, and many Abi proteins of other types exist. This mechanism serves to halt the replication of phages, protecting the overall population from harm. Antimicrobial persistence When bacteria are challenged with antibiotics, a small and distinct subpopulation of cells is able to withstand the treatment by a phenomenon dubbed as "persistence" (not to be confused with resistance). Due to their bacteriostatic properties, type II toxin-antitoxin systems have previously been thought to be responsible for persistence, by switching a fraction of the bacterial population to a dormant state. However, this hypothesis has been widely invalidated. Selfish DNA Toxin-antitoxin systems have been used as examples of selfish DNA as part of the gene centered view of evolution. It has been theorised that toxin-antitoxin loci serve only to maintain their own DNA, at the expense of the host organism. Thus, chromosomal toxin-antitoxin systems would serve no purpose and could be treated as "junk DNA". For example, the ccdAB system encoded in the chromosome of E. coli O157:H7 has been shown to be under negative selection, albeit at a slow rate due to its addictive properties. System types Type I Type I toxin-antitoxin systems rely on the base-pairing of complementary antitoxin RNA with the toxin mRNA. Translation of the mRNA is then inhibited either by degradation via RNase III or by occluding the Shine-Dalgarno sequence or ribosome binding site of the toxin mRNA. Often the toxin and antitoxin are encoded on opposite strands of DNA. The 5' or 3' overlapping region between the two genes is the area involved in complementary base-pairing, usually with between 19–23 contiguous base pairs. Toxins of type I systems are small, hydrophobic proteins that confer toxicity by damaging cell membranes. Few intracellular targets of type I toxins have been identified, possibly due to the difficult nature of analysing proteins that are poisonous to their bacterial hosts. Also, the detection of small proteins has been challenging due to technical issues, a problem that remains to be solved with large-scale analysis. Type I systems sometimes include a third component. In the case of the well-characterised hok/sok system, in addition to the hok toxin and sok antitoxin, there is a third gene, called mok. This open reading frame almost entirely overlaps that of the toxin, and the translation of the toxin is dependent on the translation of this third component. Thus the binding