Wide lag time distributions break a trade-off between reproduction and survival in bacteria
Stefany Moreno-Gámez, Daniel J. Kiviet, Clément Vulin, Susan Schlegel, Kim Schlegel, G. Sander van Doorn, Martin Ackermann
Abstract
and show that population growth after starvation is primarily determined by the cells with shortest lag due to the exponential nature of bacterial population dynamics. As a consequence, cells with long lag times have no substantial effect on population growth resumption. However, we observe that these cells provide tolerance to stressors such as antibiotics. This allows an isogenic population to break the trade-off between reproduction and survival. We support this argument with an evolutionary model which shows that bacteria evolve wide lag time distributions when both rapid growth resumption and survival under stressful conditions are under selection. Our results can explain the prevalence of antibiotic tolerance by lag and demonstrate that the benefits of phenotypic heterogeneity in fluctuating environments are particularly high when minorities with extreme phenotypes dominate population dynamics.