ArticlePLoS computational biology2020
A bacterial size law revealed by a coarse-grained model of cell physiology.
Article in PLoS computational biology, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed.
- Bridging energy and proteome allocation models allows prediction of the resource cost of traits across environments.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Coarse-grained resource allocation modeling for decoding and rewiring microbial metabolism.Trends in microbiology · 2026Review
- Cell geometry and membrane protein crowding constrain Escherichia coli growth rate, overflow metabolism, respiration, and maintenance energy.FEBS letters · 2026Article
- A proteome optimal allocation model for elucidating effects of temperature on bacterial growth.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2026Article
- A conserved C2H2 zinc finger protein, Rel1, links ribosome biogenesis to sexual development and antifungal susceptibility in a ubiquitous human fungal pathogen.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Resource allocation to cell envelopes and the scaling of bacterial growth rate.Physical biology · 2025Article
- A generalized adder for cell size homeostasis: Effects on stochastic clonal proliferation.Biophysical journal · 2025Article
- The design of unit cells by combining the self-reproduction systems and metabolic cushioning loads.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Eukaryotic cell size regulation and its implications for cellular function and dysfunction.Physiological reviews · 2024Review
- A GeneralizedbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Self-reproduction and doubling time limits of different cellular subsystems.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2023Article
- A coarse-grained resource allocation model of carbon and nitrogen metabolism in unicellular microbes.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Scaling of nuclear numbers and their spatial arrangement in skeletal muscle cell size regulation.Molecular biology of the cell · 2023Review
- Dynamic proteome trade-offs regulate bacterial cell size and growth in fluctuating nutrient environments.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Super-exponential growth and stochastic size dynamics in rod-like bacteria.Biophysical journal · 2023Article
- Article
- Fission yeast obeys a linear size law under nutrient titration.microPublication biology · 2023Article
- Phenotypic and metabolic adaptations ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Cellular resource allocation strategies for cell size and shape control in bacteria.The FEBS journal · 2022Review
- Effects of antibiotics on bacterial cell morphology and their physiological origins.Biochemical Society transactions · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Universal observations in Biology are sometimes described as "laws". In E. coli, experimental studies performed over the past six decades have revealed major growth laws relating ribosomal mass fraction and cell size to the growth rate. Because they formalize complex emerging principles in biology, growth laws have been instrumental in shaping our understanding of bacterial physiology. Here, we discovered a novel size law that connects cell size to the inverse of the metabolic proteome mass fraction and the active fraction of ribosomes. We used a simple whole-cell coarse-grained model of cell physiology that combines the proteome allocation theory and the structural model of cell division. This integrated model captures all available experimental data connecting the cell proteome composition, ribosome activity, division size and growth rate in response to nutrient quality, antibiotic treatment and increased protein burden. Finally, a stochastic extension of the model explains non-trivial correlations observed in single cell experiments including the adder principle. This work provides a simple and robust theoretical framework for studying the fundamental principles of cell size determination in unicellular organisms.
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Registered trials
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