Is cell size a spandrel?
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 28102818.
- Also identified by DOI 10.7554/eLife.22186 and PMC identifier 5245963.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
All organisms control the size of their cells. We focus here on the question of size regulation in bacteria, and suggest that the quantitative laws governing cell size and its dependence on growth rate may arise as byproducts of a regulatory mechanism which evolved to support multiple DNA replication forks. In particular, we show that the increase of bacterial cell size during Lenski's long-term evolution experiments is a natural outcome of this proposal. This suggests that, in the context of evolution, cell size may be a 'spandrel'.
Medical subject headings
- Bacillus subtilis
- Cell Size
- DNA Replication
- Escherichia coli