DYNAMIC CLUSTERING OF BACTERIAL POPULATION

Bacterial cells having the same genotype were observed to split into a few clusters of phenotypes with various levels of enzyme,activity. When the mixture of these phenotypically heterogeneous but genotypically homogeneous cells was cultivated in a liquid medium, the distribution of the population size of each cluster of phenotypes showed various kinds of dynamic oscillations. In addition, when this dynamic behavior was examined for the cells of the single colony, various patterns of shifting of homogeneous to heterogeneous lineage and vice versa were observed in the population. The results imply that differentiation of the cells with the same genotype can occur without spatial information and even under the same environment where the cells interact globally without spatial constraint. This interesting phenomenon totally contradicts the conventional biology that the genotype of a cell uniquely determines the phenotype of the cell and its progeny, but is consistent with the theoretical model of cell differentiation presented in the following paper. The sources of discrepancy between the existing theory in molecular biology and our results were discussed and it is concluded that in understanding a complex living system, a simple model consisting of the essence of the complex system can be constructed justifying the observed properties of the molecules in the system which provide free interactions.