Single rod-shaped cell fluctuations from stochastic surface/volume growth rates

Abstract

Growing rod-shaped bacterial cells need to modulate the production rates of different surface and bulk components. Population data show that the balance between these rates is central for cell physiology, and affects cell shape, but we still know little about these processes in single cells. We study a minimal stochastic model where single cells grow by two fluctuating volume-specific surface and volume growth rates, solving for the steady-state distributions and the correlation functions of the main geometric features. Our predictions allow us to address the detectability of different scenarios for the intrinsic coupling between the allocation of resources to surface and bulk growth.