Characterizing the inheritance dynamics and the inertia of cellular properties in bacteria

Living cells with identical genome exhibit variability in their physical and functional properties. This variability is generated by cell proliferation (i.e. cells become different from each other over time as they grow and produce offspring), which suggests that properties are unreliably inherited between consecutive generations. But what is the extent of unreliability of inheritance? Do cellular properties exhibit Markovian dynamics, or do they have long-term memory? Obtaining quantitative answers to these questions will enable us to uncover the sources that contribute to generating variability among genetically identical cells. It will also allow us to develop accurate description of how the properties of cells will change over time. In this talk I will present our study in which, we measure the inheritance dynamics in bacteria, and reveal how it contributes to regulating various cellular properties (size, growth rate, etc.) in future generations. This is achieved using a new novel microfluidic device that enables us to track how sister cells become different from each other over time. Our measurements provide the inheritance dynamics of different cellular properties, and the ‘inertia’ of cells to maintain these properties along time, i.e. cellular memory. We find that certain cellular properties exhibit long memory that extends up to ∼10 generations.