Fig. 1.

Variability in bistable cellular populations. (a) A two-phenotype community. Each phenotype (green and red) has its own birth rate (γ₁, γ₂) and death rate (δ₁, δ₂). They are able to switch from one phenotype to the other with the transition rates τ₁₂ and τ₂₁. (b) Coefficient of variation (CV) versus sample number. A two-phenotype community (illustrated by a) grows in a microfluidic chemostat, which can contain a maximum of 200 cells. Green and red curves are the CVs of phenotype 1 and 2 with the initial state 1:1, respectively, whereas blue and magenta curves are for the initial state 100:100. Here, γ₁ = 1.0, γ₂ = 0.5, δ₁ = δ₂ = 0.01, and τ₁₂ = τ₂₁ = 0.01. Time is in units corresponding to the number of deterministic generations of the fastest growing phenotype. Each trial was simulated for six generations of the faster growing phenotype (t ∈ [0,6]).