Fundamental Principles in Bacterial Physiology - History, Recent progress, and the Future with Focus on Cell Size Control: A Review

摘要

Bacterial physiology is a branch of biology that aims to understandoverarching principles of cellular reproduction. Many important issues inbacterial physiology are inherently quantitative, and major contributors to thefield have often brought together tools and ways of thinking from multipledisciplines. This article presents a comprehensive overview of major ideas andapproaches developed since the early 20th century for anyone who is interestedin the fundamental problems in bacterial physiology. This article is dividedinto two parts. In the first part (Sections 1 to 3), we review the first`golden era' of bacterial physiology from the 1940s to early 1970s and providea complete list of major references from that period. In the second part(Sections 4 to 7), we explain how the pioneering work from the first golden erahas influenced various rediscoveries of general quantitative principles andsignificant further development in modern bacterial physiology. Specifically,Section 4 presents the history and current progress of the `adder' principle ofcell size homeostasis. Section 5 discusses the implications of coarse-grainingthe cellular protein composition, and how the coarse-grained proteome `sectors're-balance under different growth conditions. Section 6 focuses onphysiological invariants, and explains how they are the key to understandingthe coordination between growth and the cell cycle underlying cell size controlin steady-state growth. Section 7 overviews how the temporal organization ofall the internal processes enables balanced growth. In the final Section 8, weconclude by discussing the remaining challenges for the future in the field.