Exponentially growing cells employ control strategies to maintain a stable size in the presence of noise. Phenomenological models provide important insights into these strategies, revealing classes such as "timer", "adder", and "sizer" control. However, these models necessarily ignore the molecular mechanisms needed to implement the strategy. I will describe our work showing that incorporating...
Bacteria exhibit remarkable phenotypic heterogeneity upon antibiotic exposure, induced by complex feedback mechanisms mediated by interactions between drug action, metabolism, gene regulation, and expression of resistance. However, how global transcriptional programs are rewired under drug stress in these different phenotypes remains poorly understood. In Escherichia coli, exposure to the...
How cells regulate their size remains an open question. Cell-size regulation is commonly characterized by the Pearson correlation between birth and division sizes, with the corresponding regulation parameter α defined as one minus this correlation coefficient. Single-cell experiments provide generation-resolved measurements of birth and division sizes along individual lineages, typically...
Our understanding of cell division control still relies largely on interpreting correlations between phenomenological variables, with limited connection to the underlying molecular mechanisms.
In this talk, I present an analytically tractable stochastic threshold–accumulation model in which a size-dependent divisor protein triggers division upon reaching a noisy, autocorrelated threshold....
Cell growth and division are fundamental processes that shape cellular physiology and population dynamics across diverse organisms. Over the past century, substantial progress has been made in identifying the molecular components governing these processes. Yet growth and division are inherently complex, and bridging mechanistic descriptions with the statistical patterns observed in cell-size...
