Age structure landscapes emerge from the equilibrium between aging and rejuvenation in bacterial populations.

ABSTRACT: The physiological asymmetry between daughters of a mother bacterium is produced by the inheritance of either old poles, carrying non-genetic damage, or newly synthesized poles. However, as bacteria display long-term growth stability leading to physiological immortality, there is controversy on whether asymmetry corresponds to aging. Here we show that deterministic age structure landscapes emerge from physiologically immortal bacterial lineages. Through single-cell microscopy and microfluidic techniques, we demonstrate that aging and rejuvenating bacterial lineages reach two distinct states of growth equilibria. These equilibria display stabilizing properties, which we quantified according to the compensatory trajectories of continuous lineages throughout generations. Finally, we show that

SUBMITTER: Proenca AM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6137065 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature