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. 2011 Apr 15;6(4):e18622. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018622

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Geisel et al.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.

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(A) Change of the distribution of resting states during stress for the initial parameters . Subpopulations potentially able to resume growth quickly (large ) rapidly decline upon stress exposure, resulting in a time dependent average activity (dashed black line) and death rate. (B) The population decay therefore deviates from the exponential decay of a homogeneous population. Panel (C) shows regimes in which cell-cell variability reduces (light gray, ) or enhances (dark gray, ) the population growth lag. At large steady state growth rates , population recovery is driven by the tail of the activity distribution with shorter than average growth lags. At small growth rates , or large variability , the recovery is driven by the bulk of the distribution with longer than average growth lags. Panel (D) shows regimes of benefits (light gray, ) and costs (dark gray, ) of cell-cell variability in full cycles of stress and regrowth. Heterogeneity represents a disadvantage when the population average is optimally adapted, i.e. when environments are sufficiently periodic and close to the white line compare with Fig. 5B. When environments fluctuate over a wide range, heterogeneous populations benefit from fast responders when the stress duration is short, and from highly stress resistant cells when is large.

Inline graphic — (A) Change of the distribution of resting states during stress for the initial parameters . Subpopulations potentially able to resume growth quickly (large ) rapidly decline upon stress exposure, resulting in a time dependent average activity (dashed black line) and death rate. (B) The population decay therefore deviates from the exponential decay of a homogeneous population. Panel (C) shows regimes in which cell-cell variability reduces (light gray, ) or enhances (dark gray, ) the population growth lag. At large steady state growth rates , population recovery is driven by the tail of the activity distribution with shorter than average growth lags. At small growth rates , or large variability , the recovery is driven by the bulk of the distribution with longer than average growth lags. Panel (D) shows regimes of benefits (light gray, ) and costs (dark gray, ) of cell-cell variability in full cycles of stress and regrowth. Heterogeneity represents a disadvantage when the population average is optimally adapted, i.e. when environments are sufficiently periodic and close to the white line compare with Fig. 5B. When environments fluctuate over a wide range, heterogeneous populations benefit from fast responders when the stress duration is short, and from highly stress resistant cells when is large.