Scaling of stochastic growth and division dynamics: A comparative study of individual rod-shaped cells in the Mother Machine and SChemostat platforms

Abstract

• A variety of microfluidic device designs are widely used to study the behaviors of single bacterial cells between growth conditions, but a quantitative comparison of growth between different devices remained absent.

• The authors developed a protocol to obtain side-by-side experiments using two different microfluidic approaches, finding that growth rates and interdivision times differ but are precisely compensated by the division ratio distribution.

• Identical emergent simplicities govern stochastic intergenerational homeostasis of cell sizes across device and experimental configurations. This intercondition scaling law establishes a principled route to draw comparisons of stochastic growth and division dynamics across experimental modalities.