Surface Area to Volume Ratio: A Natural Variable for Bacterial Morphogenesis

Abstract

An immediately observable feature of bacteria is that cell size and shape are remarkably constant and characteristic for a given species in a particular condition, but vary quantitatively with physiological parameters such as growth rate, indicating both genetic and environmental regulation. However, despite decades of research, the molecular mechanisms underlying bacterial morphogenesis have remained incompletely characterized. We recently demonstrated that a wide range of bacterial species exhibit a robust surface area to volume ratio (SA/V) homeostasis. Because cell size, shape, and SA/V are mathematically interconnected, if SA/V is indeed the natural variable that cells actively monitor, this finding has critical implications for our understanding of bacterial morphogenesis, placing fundamental constraints on the sizes and shapes that cells can adopt. In this Opinion article we discuss the broad implications that this novel perspective has for the field of bacterial growth and morphogenesis.

Where Should We Place LiDARs on the Autonomous Vehicle? - An Optimal Design Approach

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Transcriptional reprogramming in fused cells is triggered by plasma-membrane diminution

“…We next evaluated whether specific changes in fundamental cellular features occurring during cell fusion were responsible for YAP1 inactivation and transcriptional reprogramming. Changes in shape are known to be governed by alterations in both volume and surface area (SA) (Harris and Theriot, 2018;Okie, 2013). Importantly, recent work has shown that YAP1 activity and cellular localization is altered through variations in volume and/or SA (Hong et al, 2017;Low et al, 2014;Nardone et al, 2017;Perez Gonzalez et al, 2018;Cai et al, 2019).…”

Comparison ofEscherichia colisurface attachment methods for single-cell,in vivomicroscopy

“…Phase-contrast images of the bacteria are taken every 5 min and cells' length is extracted as described in Materials and Methods and Figure 1A. Figure 1B shows single cell growth rates, which we define as a rate of relative elongation of an exponentially growing bacterium 8,43 , of the cells grown on different surfaces. The growth rate observed is independent on the surface attachment, and, when we average the values obtain for the 6 different surfaces in Figure 1B, equals (0.0071 ± 0.0044 min −1 ) .…”