Related papers: Cell size regulation in microorganisms
The variability in cell size of an isogenic population of Escherichia coli has been widely reported in experiment. The probability density function (PDF) of cell lengths has been variously described by exponential and lognormal functions.…
In stable environments, cell size fluctuations are thought to be governed by simple physical principles, as suggested by recent findings of scaling properties. Here, by developing a microfluidic device and using E. coli, we investigate the…
For various species of biological cells, experimental observations indicate the existence of universal distributions of the cellular size, scaling relations between the cell-size moments and simple rules for the cell-size control. We…
This paper theoretically analyzes a phenomenological stochastic model for bacterial growth. This model comprises cell division and the linear growth of cells, where growth rates and cell cycles are drawn from lognormal distributions. We…
Rod-like bacteria maintain their cylindrical shapes with remarkable precision during growth. However, they are also capable to adapt their shapes to external forces and constraints, for example by growing into narrow or curved confinements.…
Cells achieve size homeostasis by regulating their division timing based on their size, added size, and cell cycle time. Previous research under steady-state conditions demonstrated the robustness of these mechanisms. However, their dynamic…
A recent burst of dynamic single-cell growth-division data makes it possible to characterize the stochastic dynamics of cell division control in bacteria. Different modeling frameworks were used to infer specific mechanisms from such data,…
Understanding how growth induces form is a longstanding biological question. Many studies concentrated on the shapes of plant cells, fungi or bacteria. Some others have shown the importance of the mechanical properties of bacterial walls…
The mechanism of bacterial cell size control has been a mystery for decades, which involves the well-coordinated growth and division in the cell cycle. The revolutionary modern techniques of microfluidics and the advanced live imaging…
During division it is of primary importance for a cell to correctly determine the site of cleavage. The bacterium Escherichia coli divides in the center, producing two daughter cells of equal size. Selection of the center as the correct…
Recent experiments have supported the Adder model for E. coli division control. This model posits that bacteria grow, on average, a fixed size before division. It also predicts decorrelation between the noise in the added size and the size…
Bacteria are prolific at colonizing diverse surfaces under a widerange of environmental conditions, and exhibit fascinating examples of self-organization across scales. Though it has recently attracted considerable interest, the role of…
Microbial growth and division are fundamental processes relevant to many areas of life science. Of particular interest are homeostasis mechanisms, which buffer growth and division from accumulating fluctuations over multiple cycles. These…
Self-organization of proteins in space and time is of crucial importance for the functioning of cellular processes. Often, this organization takes place in the presence of strong random fluctuations due to the small number of molecules…
Recent studies have shown that even in the absence of extrinsic stress, the morphologically symmetrically dividing model bacteria Escherichia coli do not generate offspring with equal reproductive fitness. Instead, daughter cells exhibit…
We study the effect of correlations in generation times on the dynamics of population growth of microorganisms. We show that any non-zero correlation that is due to cell-size regulation, no matter how small, induces long-term oscillations…
Cell size control is crucial for maintaining cellular function and homeostasis. In this study, we develop a first-order partial differential equation model to examine the effects of three key size control mechanisms: the sizer, timer, and…
Single-cell experiments revealed substantial variability in generation times, growth rates but also in birth and division sizes between genetically identical cells. Understanding how these fluctuations determine the fitness of the…
We consider a class of biologically-motivated stochastic processes in which a unicellular organism divides its resources (volume or damaged proteins, in particular) symmetrically or asymmetrically between its progeny. Assuming the final…
Positioning of the midcell division plane within the bacterium E. coli is controlled by the min system of proteins: MinC, MinD and MinE. These proteins coherently oscillate from end to end of the bacterium. We present a reaction--diffusion…