The role of division stochasticity on the robustness of bacterial size dynamics

Abstract

Variables of bacterial division such as size at birth, growth rate, division time, and the position of the septal ring, all vary from cell to cell. Currently, it is unknown how these random fluctuations can combine to produce a robust mechanism of homeostasis. To address this question, we studied the dynamics of the cell division process from both experimental and theoretical perspectives. Our model predicts robustness in division times as sustained oscillations in metrics of the cell size distribution, such as the mean, variability, and the cell size autocorrelation function. These oscillations do not get damped, even considering stochasticity in division timing and the cell size at the beginning of the experiment. Damping appears just after inducing stochasticity in either the septum position or the growth rate. We compare the predictions of the full model with the size dynamics of E. coli bacteria growing in minimal media using either glucose or glycerol as carbon sources. We observe that growth in poorer media increases the noise in both partitioning position and growth rate. This additional noise results in oscillations with more damping. Although intracellular noise is known as a source of phenotypic variation, our results show that it can play a similar but subtler role in maintaining population-level homeostasis by causing rapid desynchronization of cell cycles..