Noise and Epigenetic Inheritance of Single-Cell Division Times Influence Population Fitness.

ABSTRACT: The fitness effect of biological noise remains unclear. For example, even within clonal microbial populations, individual cells grow at different speeds. Although it is known that the individuals' mean growth speed can affect population-level fitness, it is unclear how or whether growth speed heterogeneity itself is subject to natural selection. Here, we show that noisy single-cell division times can significantly affect population-level growth rate. Using time-lapse microscopy to measure the division times of thousands of individual S. cerevisiae cells across different genetic and environmental backgrounds, we find that the length of individual cells' division times can vary substantially between clonal individuals and that sublineages often show epigenetic inheritance of division times.

SUBMITTER: Cerulus B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5428746 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature