M.Sc Thesis | |
M.Sc Student | Susman Lee |
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Subject | Multi-dimensional phenotype and long-term dynamics in individual bacteria |
Department | Department of Applied Mathematics | Supervisor | PROF. Naama Brenner |
Genetically
identical microbial cells typically display significant variability in every
measurable property. In particular, highly abundant proteins - which can
determine cellular behavior exhibit large variability in copy number among
individuals. Their distribution has a universal shape common to different
proteins and microorganisms; the same distribution shape is measured both in
populations and in single-cell temporal traces. Moreover, different highly
expressed proteins are statistically correlated with cell size and with
cell-cycle time. These results indicate
coupling between measurable properties in the cell and buffering of their
statistics from the microscopic scale. We propose a modeling framework in which
the complex intracellular processes produce a phenotype composed of many
effectively interacting components. These interactions, as well as the
imperfect nature of cell division events, provide a simple model that
reconstructs many properties of phenotypic variability on several timescales.
These include fluctuating accumulation rates along consecutive cell-cycles,
with correlations among the rates of phenotype components; universal and
non-universal properties of distributions; correlations between cell-cycle time
and different phenotype components; and temporally structured autocorrelation
functions with long (∼ 10 generation) timescales.