Stochastic gene expression: bacterial elites in chemotaxis

Abstract

Even in the absence of genetic or environmental differences, cells differ from each other in their molecular make‐up. The consequences of these phenotypic differences are often not well understood. New work by Waite et al (2016) directly links variation in the molecular composition of individual bacterial cells to their population‐level performance.

Figure 1. Rare phenotypes can dramatically improve population performance

A population consists of cells that differ in their tumble bias (pie charts on the left). The mapping between tumble bias and distance travelled is non‐linear: cells with a low tumble bias travel much further up a gradient in chemoattractant. Due to this non‐linearity, the average performance (blue dashed line) is higher than the performance of the average phenotype (dark grey dashed line).