ArticleCell2014
A constant size extension drives bacterial cell size homeostasis.
Article in Cell, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 241 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
241 citing papers in PubMed, 533 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Bacterial growth rate in populations and single cells.Nature microbiology · 2026Review
- Genome microbiology at 20 years: who we are and where we are going.DNA research : an international journal for rapid publication of reports on genes and genomes · 2026Article
- mSphere of Influence: The bacterial growth law-revisiting the old to discover the new.mSphere · 2026Article
- A coma pattern-based autofocusing method resolves bacterial cold shock response at single-cell level.eLife · 2026Article
- Deep-learning deconvolution and segmentation of fluorescent membranes for high-precision bacterial cell-size profiling.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Organelle scaling over a 100-fold cell size range.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Impact of variability in cell generation times on cell-to-cell variability of protein concentrations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Stochasticity in mammalian cell growth rates drives cell-to-cell variability independently of cell size and divisions.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Inferring bacterial cell size dynamics across media conditions.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Artificial-intelligence-driven segmentation and analysis of microbial cells.Journal of biomedical optics · 2026Article
- Cell Population Dynamics Informed by Cell-Cycle Regulation: A Deterministic Modeling Toolkit.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2026Review
- Article
- Modulation of bacterial cell size and growth rate via activation of a cell envelope stress response.mBio · 2025Article
- Essentialome-Wide Multigenerational Imaging Reveals Mechanistic Origins of Cell Growth Laws.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- A growing problem: The many unsolved mysteries of cell growth.Molecular biology of the cell · 2025Review
- Mechanics ofMolecular biology of the cell · 2025Article
- Nonlinear memory in cell-division dynamics across species.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Uropathogenic Escherichia coli proliferate as a coccoid morphotype inside human host cells.PLoS biology · 2025Article
- Gene expression cycles drive non-exponential bacterial growth.Physical review research · 2025Article
181 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Cell size control is an intrinsic feature of the cell cycle. In bacteria, cell growth and division are thought to be coupled through a cell size threshold. Here, we provide direct experimental evidence disproving the critical size paradigm. Instead, we show through single-cell microscopy and modeling that the evolutionarily distant bacteria Escherichia coli and Caulobacter crescentus achieve cell size homeostasis by growing, on average, the same amount between divisions, irrespective of cell length at birth. This simple mechanism provides a remarkably robust cell size control without the need of being precise, abating size deviations exponentially within a few generations. This size homeostasis mechanism is broadly applicable for symmetric and asymmetric divisions, as well as for different growth rates. Furthermore, our data suggest that constant size extension is implemented at or close to division. Altogether, our findings provide fundamentally distinct governing principles for cell size and cell-cycle control in bacteria.
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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.