The effects of stochasticity at the single-cell level and cell size control on the population growth

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework linking single-cell stochastic growth and size control to population growth rates, validated by experiments, revealing that growth rate variability and mother-daughter correlations critically influence microbial population dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a closed-form formula for population growth rate considering cell size control and single-cell growth variability, addressing limitations of previous models.

Findings

Population growth rate depends only on single-cell growth rate variability.

Narrow growth rate distributions enhance population growth.

Mother-daughter growth rate correlations influence overall growth dynamics.

Abstract

Establishing a quantitative connection between the population growth rate and the generation times of single cells is a prerequisite for understanding evolutionary dynamics of microbes. However, existing theories fail to account for the experimentally observed correlations between mother-daughter generation times that are unavoidable when cell size is controlled for - which is essentially always the case. Here, we study population-level growth in the presence of cell size control and corroborate our theory using experimental measurements of single-cell growth rates. We derive a closed formula for the population growth rate and demonstrate that it only depends on the single-cell growth rate variability, not other sources of stochasticity. Our work provides an evolutionary rationale for the narrow growth rate distributions often observed in nature: when single-cell growth rates are less variable but have a fixed mean, the population will exhibit an enhanced population growth rate, as long as the correlations between the mother and daughter cells' growth rates are not too strong.