title: Scaling laws governing stochastic growth and division of single bacterial cells.
abstract: Uncovering the quantitative laws that govern the growth and division of single cells remains a major challenge. Using a unique combination of technologies that yields unprecedented statistical precision, we find that the sizes of individual Caulobacter crescentus cells increase exponentially in time. We also establish that they divide upon reaching a critical multiple (≈ 1.8) of their initial sizes, rather than an absolute size. We show that when the temperature is varied, the growth and division timescales scale proportionally with each other over the physiological temperature range. Strikingly, the cell-size and division-time distributions can both be rescaled by their mean values such that the condition-specific distributions collapse to universal curves. We account for these observations with a minimal stochastic model that is based on an autocatalytic cycle. It predicts the scalings, as well as specific functional forms for the universal curves. Our experimental and theoretical analysis reveals a simple physical principle governing these complex biological processes: a single temperature-dependent scale of cellular time governs the stochastic dynamics of growth and division in balanced growth conditions.
authors.affiliation: James Franck Institute and Institute for Biophysical Dynamics.
authors.forename: Srividya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Iyer-Biswas
authors.affiliation: James Franck Institute and Institute for Biophysical Dynamics.
authors.forename: Charles S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Wright
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and.
authors.forename: Jonathan T
authors.initials: JT
authors.lastname: Henry
authors.affiliation: James Franck Institute and Institute for Biophysical Dynamics.
authors.forename: Klevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Lo
authors.affiliation: James Franck Institute and Institute for Biophysical Dynamics.
authors.forename: Stanislav
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Burov
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125; and.
authors.forename: Yihan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Physical Biosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720.
authors.forename: Gavin E
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: Crooks
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and.
authors.forename: Sean
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Crosson
authors.affiliation: James Franck Institute and Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637; dinner@uchicago.edu nfschere@uchicago.edu.
authors.forename: Aaron R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Dinner
authors.affiliation: James Franck Institute and Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637; dinner@uchicago.edu nfschere@uchicago.edu.
authors.forename: Norbert F
authors.initials: NF
authors.lastname: Scherer
mesh_terms: D016935:Caulobacter crescentus / Q000254:growth & development*; D002455:Cell Division / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological; D013269:Stochastic Processes
keywords: Arrhenius law; Hinshelwood cycle; cell-to-cell variability; exponential growth; single-cell dynamics