Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo: "Timing cellular decision making in bacteria"

Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo
Department of Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain

Timing cellular decision making in bacteria

Cells need to carefully time their decisions depending on both intracellular and intercellular conditions. Here we present evidence of a dynamical mecanism used by the bacterium Bacillus subtilis to schedule a cellular decision, namely sporulation, using intrinsic cues rather than a well-defined extrinsic trigger. Potential advantages of such an strategy, taking the form of a combination of all-or-none and gradual processes (which contrasts with schemes usually proposed, based on either purely all-or-none or purely gradual decisions), will be discussed.