ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2014
Stochastic holin expression can account for lysis time variation in the bacteriophage λ.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 84 citations in OpenAlex.
- Inferring single-cell heterogeneity of bacteriophage lysis-associated life-history traits from population-scale dynamics.Science advances · 2026Article
- Article
- Live and let die: Lysis time variability and resource limitation shape lytic bacteriophage fitness.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Sequestration of gene products by decoys enhances precision in the timing of intracellular events.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Molecular mechanisms of precise timing in cell lysis.Biophysical journal · 2024Article
- Article
- Single-Cell Approach Reveals Intercellular Heterogeneity in Phage-Producing Capacities.Microbiology spectrum · 2023Article
- Topological examination of the bacteriophage lambda S holin by EPR spectroscopy.Biochimica et biophysica acta. Biomembranes · 2023Article
- Article
- Conjugative plasmid transfer is limited by prophages but can be overcome by high conjugation rates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Bacteriophage-encoded lethal membrane disruptors: Advances in understanding and potential applications.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Review
- From Bench to Keyboard and Back Again: A Brief History of Lambda Phage Modeling.Annual review of biophysics · 2021Review
- Biological Characterization and Evolution of Bacteriophage T7-△holin During the Serial Passage Process.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Article
- BAYESIAN INFERENCE OF STOCHASTIC REACTION NETWORKS USING MULTIFIDELITY SEQUENTIAL TEMPERED MARKOV CHAIN MONTE CARLO.International journal for uncertainty quantification · 2020Article
- First-passage time statistics of stochastic transcription process for time-dependent reaction rates.The European physical journal. E, Soft matter · 2019Article
- Phage-Antibiotic Synergy via Delayed Lysis.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2018Article
- Added value of autoregulation and multi-step kinetics of transcription initiation.Royal Society open science · 2018Article
- Infection by bacteriophage lambda: an evolving paradigm for cellular individuality.Current opinion in microbiology · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The inherent stochastic nature of biochemical processes can drive differences in gene expression between otherwise identical cells. While cell-to-cell variability in gene expression has received much attention, randomness in timing of events has been less studied. We investigate event timing at the single-cell level in a simple system, the lytic pathway of the bacterial virus phage λ. In individual cells, lysis occurs on average at 65 min, with an s.d. of 3.5 min. Interestingly, mutations in the lysis protein, holin, alter both the lysis time (LT) mean and variance. In our analysis, LT is formulated as the first-passage time (FPT) for cellular holin levels to cross a critical threshold. Exact analytical formulae for the FPT moments are derived for stochastic gene expression models. These formulae reveal how holin transcription and translation efficiencies independently modulate the LT mean and variation. Analytical expressions for the LT moments are used to evaluate previously published single-cell LT data for λ phages with mutations in the holin sequence or its promoter. Our results show that stochastic holin expression is sufficient to account for the intercellular LT differences in both wild-type phages, and phage variants where holin transcription and the threshold for lysis have been experimentally altered. Finally, our analysis reveals regulatory motifs that enhance the robustness of lysis timing to cellular noise.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.