Inference of cell division parameters in bacteria under transient growth conditions

Time-resolved inference in Escherichia coli shows the division strategy parameter vanishes for the adder in steady exponential growth but becomes negative during entry into and exit from starvation.

• Why it matters: Steady-growth assumptions limit quantitative models in dynamic environments, where growth rates and division control can shift during nutrient depletion and starvation transitions.
• What they did: The authors infer division control parameters from single-cell size trajectories under nonsteady growth by combining time-dependent single-cell growth-rate estimation with a maximum-likelihood estimator, then select models using Akaike information criterion.
• The result: Across published datasets spanning steady exponential growth, gradual nutrient depletion, and exit from starvation, the adder model fits steady growth, while transient deviations toward sizer-adder control better explain stationary-phase entry and exit.

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