Physical constraints and biological regulations underlie universal osmoresponses

Reviewer #1 (Public review):

Summary:

A theoretical model for microbial osmoresponse was proposed. The model assumes simple phenomenological rules: (i) the change of free water volume in the cell due to osmotic imbalance based on pressure balance, (ii) Osmoregulation that assumes change of the proteome partitioning depending on the osmotic pressure that affects the osmolyte-producing protein production, (iii) The cell-wall synthesis regulation where the change of the turgor pressure to the cell-wall synthesis efficiency to go back to the target turgor pressure, (iv) Effect of Intracellular crowding assuming that the biochemical reactions slow down for more crowding and stops when the protein density (protein mass divided by free water volume) reaches a critical value. The parameter values were found in the literature or obtained by fitting to the experimental data. The authors compare the model behavior with various microorganismcs (E. coli, B. subtils, S. Cerevisiae, S. pombe), and successfully reproduced the overall trend (steady state behavior for many of them, dynamics for S. pombe). In addition, the model predicts non-trivial behavior such as the fast cell growth just after the hypoosmotic shock, which is consistent with experimental observation. The authors further make experimentally testable predictions regarding mutant behavior and transient dynamics.

Strength:

The theory assumes simple mechanistic dependence between core variables without going into specific molecular mechanisms of regulations. The simplicity allows the theory to apply to different organisms by adjusting the time scales with parameters, and the model successfully explains broad classes of observed behaviours. Mathematically, the model provides analytical expressions of the parameter dependences and an understanding of the dynamics through the phase space without being buried in the detail. This theory can serve as a base to discuss the universality and diversity of microbial osmoresponse.

Weakness:

The core part of this model is that everything is coupled with growth physiology, and, as far as I understand, the assumption (iv) (eq. 8) that imposes the global reaction rate dependence on crowding plays a crucial role. I would think this is a strong and interesting assumption. However, the abstract or discussion does not discuss the importance of this assumption. In addition, the paper does not discuss gene regulation explicitly, and some comparison with a molecular mechanism-oriented model may be beneficial to highlight the pros and cons of the current approach.

Reviewer #2 (Public review):

Summary:

In this study, Ye et al. have developed a theoretical model of osmotic pressure adaptation by osmolyte production and wall synthesis.

Strengths:

They validate their model predictions of a rapid increase in growth rate on osmotic shock experimentally using fission yeast. The study has several interesting insights which are of interest to the wider community of cell size and mechanics.

Weaknesses:

Multiple aspects of this manuscript require addressing, in terms of clarity and consistency with previous literature. The specifics are listed as major and minor comments.

Major comments:

(1) The motivation for the work is weak and needs more clarity.

(2) The link between sections is very frequently missing. The authors directly address the problem that they are trying to solve without any motivation in the results section.

(3) The parameters used in the models (symbols) need to be explained better to make the paper more readable.

(4) Throughout the paper, the authors keep switching between organisms that they are modelling. There needs to be some consistency in this aspect where they mention what organism they are trying to model, since some assumptions that they make may not be valid for both yeast as well as bacteria.

(5) The extent of universality of osmoregulation i.e the limitations are not very well highlighted.

(6) Line 198-200: It is not clear in the text what organisms the authors are writing about here. "Experiments suggested that the turgor pressure induce cell-wall synthesis, e.g., through mechanosensors on cell membrane [45, 46], by increasing the pore size of the peptidoglycan network [5], and by accelerating the moving velocity of the cell-wall synthesis machinery [31]". This however is untrue for bacteria as shown by the study (reference 22 is this paper: E. Rojas, J. A. Theriot, and K. C. Huang, Response of escherichia coli growth rate to osmotic shock, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, 7807 (2014).

(7) The time scale of reactions to hyperosmotic shocks does not agree with previous literature (reference 22). Therefore defining which organism you are looking at is important. Hence the statement " Because the timescale of the osmoresponse process, which is around hours (Figure 3B), is much longer than the timescale of the supergrowth phase, which is about 20 minutes, the turgor pressure at the growth rate peak can be well approximated by its immediate value after the shock." from line 447 does not seem to make sense. The authors need to address this.