Related papers: Interrogating the Escherichia coli cell cycle by c…
Isogenic Escherichia coli growing exponentially in a constant environment display large variation in growth-rates, division-sizes and generation-times. It is unclear how these seemingly random cell cycles can be reconciled with the precise…
Various rod-shaped bacteria such as the canonical gram negative Escherichia coli or the well-studied gram positive Bacillus subtilis divide symmetrically after they approximately double their volume. Their size at division is not constant,…
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.…
Organisms across all domains of life regulate the size of their cells. However, the means by which this is done is poorly understood. We study two abstracted "molecular" models for size regulation: inhibitor dilution and initiator…
The mean size of exponentially dividing E. coli cells cultured in different nutrient conditions is known to depend on the mean growth rate only. However, the joint fluctuations relating cell size, doubling time and individual growth rate…
Background: In Escherichia coli, overlapping rounds of DNA replication allow the bacteria to double in faster times than the time required to copy the genome. The precise timing of initiation of DNA replication is determined by a regulatory…
The data we analyze derives from the observation of numerous cells of the bacterium Escherichia coli (E. coli) growing and dividing. Single cells grow and divide to give birth to two daughter cells, that in turn grow and divide. Thus, a…
Bacteria are able to maintain a narrow distribution of cell sizes by regulating the timing of cell divisions. In rich nutrient conditions, cells divide much faster than their chromosomes replicate. This implies that cells maintain multiple…
To maintain a constant cell size, dividing cells have to coordinate cell cycle events with cell growth. This coordination has for long been supposed to rely on the existence of size thresholds determining cell cycle progression [1]. In…
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…
A mathematical model of Min oscillation in Escherichia coli is numerically studied. The oscillatory state and hysteretic transition are explained with simpler coupled differential equations. Next, we propose a simple model of cell growth…
Cells employ control strategies to maintain a stable size. Dividing at a target size (the `sizer' strategy) is thought to produce the tightest size distribution. However, this result follows from phenomenological models that ignore the…
How exponentially growing cells maintain size homeostasis is an important fundamental problem. Recent single-cell studies in prokaryotes have uncovered the adder principle, where cells on average, add a fixed size (volume) from birth to…
Uncovering the quantitative laws that govern the growth and division of single cells remains a major challenge. Using a unique combination of technologies that yields unprecedented statistical precision, we find that the sizes of individual…
Growing living cultures of Escherichia coli bacteria were investigated using real-time in situ rheology and rheo-imaging measurements. In the early stages of growth (lag phase), and when subjected to a constant stationary shear, the…
In Escherichia coli the response to DNA damage shows strong cell-to-cell-heterogenity. This results in a random delay in cell division and asymmetrical binary fission of single cells, which can compromise the size homeostasis of the…
Measurements of cell size dynamics have established the adder principle as a robust mechanism of cell size homeostasis. In this framework, cells add a nearly constant amount of size during each cell cycle, independent of their size at…
The bacterium Escherichia coli initiates replication once per cell cycle at a precise volume per origin and adds an on average constant volume between successive initiation events, independent of the initiation size. Yet, a molecular model…
Initiating replication synchronously at multiple origins of replication allows the bacterium Escherichia coli to divide even faster than the time it takes to replicate the entire chromosome in nutrient-rich environments. What mechanisms…
Fundamental mechanisms governing cell size control and homeostasis are still poorly understood. The relationship between sizes at division and birth in single cells is used as a metric to categorize the basis of size homeostasis [1-3].…