Point of View: Is cell size a spandrel?
- Harvard University, United States
Figures
Figure 1
Phenomenological models for cell size control in bacteria.
This graph shows how the size at division, , depends on the size at birth (x-axis) in three different models. The parameter is related to the slope of the function, and can continuously interpolate across different models. Its value can be determined from single-cell level correlations (Amir, 2014; see Marantan and Amir, 2016 for a recent generalization of this phase diagram). As increases from 0 to 1, the correlations between mother and daughter cell sizes become weaker, yet the size distribution becomes narrower. The prevailing model for a critical size at initiation is effectively a ‘sizer’, and is inconsistent with recent experimental data supporting an ‘adder’.
Figure 2
Bacterial evolution and growth regulation.
E. coli cells evolving in a culture tube show both increasing fitness over time as well as increasing size. This can be naturally explained by a simple, specific regulation strategy, consistent with additional experiments. Figure adapted from Lenski and Travisano, 1994, with permission.
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Point of View: Is cell size a spandrel?
eLife 6:e22186.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.22186
