Emergent Simplicities in the Living Histories of Individual Cells

Abstract

Organisms maintain the status quo, holding key physiological variables constant to within an acceptable tolerance, and yet adapt with precision and plasticity to dynamic changes in externalities. What organizational principles ensure such exquisite yet robust control of systems-level “state variables” in complex systems with an extraordinary number of moving parts and fluctuating variables? Here, we focus on these issues in the specific context of intra- and intergenerational life histories of individual bacterial cells, whose biographies are precisely charted via high-precision dynamic experiments using the SChemostat technology. We highlight intra- and intergenerational scaling laws and other “emergent simplicities” revealed by these high-precision data. In turn, these facilitate a principled route to dimensional reduction of the problem and serve as essential building blocks for phenomenological and mechanistic theory. Parameter-free data-theory matches for multiple organisms validate theory frameworks and explicate the systems physics of stochastic homeostasis and adaptation.