English

Evolutionary advantage of cell size control

Biological Physics 2023-03-15 v1 Statistical Mechanics Populations and Evolution

Abstract

We analyze the advantage of cell size control strategies in growing populations under mortality constraints. We demonstrate a general advantage of the adder control strategy in the presence of growth-dependent mortality, and for different size-dependent mortality landscapes. Its advantage stems from epigenetic heritability of cell size, which enables selection to act on the distribution of cell sizes in a population to avoid mortality thresholds and adapt to a mortality landscape.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2303.08042,
  title  = {Evolutionary advantage of cell size control},
  author = {Spencer Hobson-Gutierrez and Edo Kussell},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2303.08042},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T09:16:52.406Z