Abstract
Recent results showing the magnitude of fluctuations in individual cell division times to be highly concerted across widely varying cell types and environmental conditions have been difficult to explain with current molecular cell cycle models. Here we present a phenomenological model for the regulation of cellular division time distributions determining both bulk growth rate and ensemble fluctuations. A cellular “fitness” function is proposed which incorporates not only growth rate, which is maximized when fluctuations are minimized, but also ensemble response time to environmental stimulus which decreases for increasing fluctuations. Single cell division data is collected on a population of isogenic cells subjected to varying environmental stimuli and compared to the model. Our findings suggest that even cells exhibiting exponential growth do not optimize their “fitness” through growth rate alone, but also response time.
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