TY - JOUR TI - Single-cell growth inference of Corynebacterium glutamicum reveals asymptotically linear growth AU - Messelink, Joris JB AU - Meyer, Fabian AU - Bramkamp, Marc AU - Broedersz, Chase P A2 - Walczak, Aleksandra M VL - 10 PY - 2021 DA - 2021/10/04 SP - e70106 C1 - eLife 2021;10:e70106 DO - 10.7554/eLife.70106 UR - https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.70106 AB - Regulation of growth and cell size is crucial for the optimization of bacterial cellular function. So far, single bacterial cells have been found to grow predominantly exponentially, which implies the need for tight regulation to maintain cell size homeostasis. Here, we characterize the growth behavior of the apically growing bacterium Corynebacterium glutamicum using a novel broadly applicable inference method for single-cell growth dynamics. Using this approach, we find that C. glutamicum exhibits asymptotically linear single-cell growth. To explain this growth mode, we model elongation as being rate-limited by the apical growth mechanism. Our model accurately reproduces the inferred cell growth dynamics and is validated with elongation measurements on a transglycosylase deficient ΔrodA mutant. Finally, with simulations we show that the distribution of cell lengths is narrower for linear than exponential growth, suggesting that this asymptotically linear growth mode can act as a substitute for tight division length and division symmetry regulation. KW - cell-size homeostasis KW - single-cell growth KW - apical growth KW - RodA KW - cell wall KW - C. glutamicum JF - eLife SN - 2050-084X PB - eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd ER -