ArticleNature communications2018
Escherichia coli can survive stress by noisy growth modulation.
Article in Nature communications, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 59 papers.
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Who cites it
59 citing papers in PubMed.
- Mixed positive and negative feedback loops drive diverse single-cell gene expression dynamics.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Fast, StreamlinedChemical & biomedical imaging · 2026Article
- Growth rate-dependent mutations and phenotypic switching facilitate rapid adaptation.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2026Article
- Dynamic heterogeneity in an E. coli stress response regulon mediates gene activation and antimicrobial peptide tolerance.Cell reports · 2026Article
- Population dynamics of generalist and specialist strategies under feast-famine cycles.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Overriding Bioprocess Perturbations With a Cell-Machine Interface for Reliable Microbial Stress-Response Control.Microbial biotechnology · 2026Article
- A nutrient bottleneck controls antibiotic efficacy in structured bacterial populations.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Survival of ampicillin-treated uropathogenic Escherichia coli is independent of single-cell growth rates.npj antimicrobials and resistance · 2026Article
- Exploring single-cell biosynthetic noise and dynamics for enhanced betaxanthin production in Escherichia coli.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Gene Expression Depends on the Interplay Among Growth, Resource Biogenesis, and Nutrient Quality.ACS synthetic biology · 2025Article
- Evaluating the predictive power of combined gene expression dynamics from single cells on antibiotic survival.mSystems · 2025Article
- Stochastic gene expression in proliferating cells: Differing noise intensity in single-cell and population perspectives.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Observation of persister cell histories reveals diverse modes of survival in antibiotic persistence.eLife · 2025Article
- Environmental and molecular noise buffering by the cyanobacterial clock in individual cells.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Pulsatile basal gene expression as a fitness determinant in bacteria.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Optimisation of gene expression noise for cellular persistence against lethal events.Journal of theoretical biology · 2025Article
- Diversification of single-cell growth dynamics under starvation influences subsequent reproduction in a clonal bacterial population.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Progressive decline in old pole gene expression signal enhances phenotypic heterogeneity in bacteria.Science advances · 2024Article
- Methods for studying microbial acid stress responses: from molecules to populations.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Gene expression can be noisy, as can the growth of single cells. Such cell-to-cell variation has been implicated in survival strategies for bacterial populations. However, it remains unclear how single cells couple gene expression with growth to implement these strategies. Here, we show how noisy expression of a key stress-response regulator, RpoS, allows E. coli to modulate its growth dynamics to survive future adverse environments. We reveal a dynamic positive feedback loop between RpoS and growth rate that produces multi-generation RpoS pulses. We do so experimentally using single-cell, time-lapse microscopy and microfluidics and theoretically with a stochastic model. Next, we demonstrate that E. coli prepares for sudden stress by entering prolonged periods of slow growth mediated by RpoS. This dynamic phenotype is captured by the RpoS-growth feedback model. Our synthesis of noisy gene expression, growth, and survival paves the way for further exploration of functional phenotypic variability.
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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.