Lineage space and the propensity of bacterial cells to undergo growth transitions

View/ Open
Issue Date
2018-08-22Author
Bandyopadhyay, Arnab
Wang, Huijing
Ray, J. Christian J.
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Rights
© 2018 Bandyopadhyay et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The molecular makeup of the offspring of a dividing cell gradually becomes phenotypically decorrelated from the parent cell by noise and regulatory mechanisms that amplify phenotypic heterogeneity. Such regulatory mechanisms form networks that contain thresholds between phenotypes. Populations of cells can be poised near the threshold so that a subset of the population probabilistically undergoes the phenotypic transition. We sought to characterize the diversity of bacterial populations around a growth-modulating threshold via analysis of the effect of non-genetic inheritance, similar to conditions that create antibiotic-tolerant persister cells and other examples of bet hedging. Using simulations and experimental lineage data in Escherichia coli, we present evidence that regulation of growth amplifies the dependence of growth arrest on cellular lineage, causing clusters of related cells undergo growth arrest in certain conditions. Our simulations predict that lineage correlations and the sensitivity of growth to changes in toxin levels coincide in a critical regime. Below the critical regime, the sizes of related growth arrested clusters are distributed exponentially, while in the critical regime clusters sizes are more likely to become large. Furthermore, phenotypic diversity can be nearly as high as possible near the critical regime, but for most parameter values it falls far below the theoretical limit. We conclude that lineage information is indispensable for understanding regulation of cellular growth.
Collections
Citation
Bandyopadhyay A, Wang H, Ray JCJ (2018) Lineage space and the propensity of bacterial cells to undergo growth transitions. PLoS Comput Biol 14(8): e1006380. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006380
Items in KU ScholarWorks are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.
We want to hear from you! Please share your stories about how Open Access to this item benefits YOU.
Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as: © 2018 Bandyopadhyay et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.