ArticleMolecular systems biology2016
Non-genetic diversity modulates population performance.
Article in Molecular systems biology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 49 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
49 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
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- The dynamic response of the bacterial flagellar motor to its direct intracellular input signal.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Article
- ChemotaxingArXiv · 2025Article
- ChemotaxingbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Navigating bacterial motility through chemotaxis: from molecular mechanisms to physiological perspectives.Folia microbiologica · 2025Review
- Coarse-graining bacterial diffusion in disordered media to surface states.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Nongenetic adaptation by collective migration.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Trajectory analysis ofBiomicrofluidics · 2024Article
- The ability to sense the environment is heterogeneously distributed in cell populations.eLife · 2024Article
- Direct measurement of dynamic attractant gradients reveals breakdown of the Patlak-Keller-Segel chemotaxis model.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Direct measurement of dynamic attractant gradients reveals breakdown of the Patlak-Keller-Segel chemotaxis model.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- The ecological roles of bacterial chemotaxis.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2022Review
- Collective behavior and nongenetic inheritance allow bacterial populations to adapt to changing environments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Imaging whole-brain activity to understand behavior.Nature reviews. Physics · 2022Article
- Bayesian-based decipherment of in-depth information in bacterial chemical sensing beyond pleasant/unpleasant responses.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Escherichia coli chemotaxis is information limited.Nature physics · 2021Article
- Multiple functions of flagellar motility and chemotaxis in bacterial physiology.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2021Review
- Article
Corrections and comments
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- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Biological functions are typically performed by groups of cells that express predominantly the same genes, yet display a continuum of phenotypes. While it is known how one genotype can generate such non-genetic diversity, it remains unclear how different phenotypes contribute to the performance of biological function at the population level. We developed a microfluidic device to simultaneously measure the phenotype and chemotactic performance of tens of thousands of individual, freely swimming Escherichia coli as they climbed a gradient of attractant. We discovered that spatial structure spontaneously emerged from initially well-mixed wild-type populations due to non-genetic diversity. By manipulating the expression of key chemotaxis proteins, we established a causal relationship between protein expression, non-genetic diversity, and performance that was theoretically predicted. This approach generated a complete phenotype-to-performance map, in which we found a nonlinear regime. We used this map to demonstrate how changing the shape of a phenotypic distribution can have as large of an effect on collective performance as changing the mean phenotype, suggesting that selection could act on both during the process of adaptation.
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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.