"Scaling Laws of Microbial Growth"Albert, CarloScaling laws that govern the growth and division of microbes, linking fundamental time and size scales, have been found to hold across a broad spectrum of conditions and across various species. These laws hint at the presence of universal principles underlying cellular growth and division that remain undiscovered. Here, we hypothesize that such laws emerge from the fact that microbes operate close to a critical point associated with a second order active-to-absorbing phase transition in zero spatial dimensions. That is, we neglect inter-cellular interactions and assume that the cells achieve homeostasis adjusting their fundamental growth- and division time-scales such that they are poised close to a critical point. The universality class associated with this critical point is closely related to systems with multiplicative noise in zero spatial dimensions. We introduce a general class of growth-division models, described by deterministic cellular growth interspersed with stochastic division events and derive the associated scaling laws. Then, we investigate several members of the class, starting from a simple one with just one trait that is analytically tractable and ending with a biologically realistic model with three traits. We conclude by showing some empirical evidence. |
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