FIGURE 3.

Monte-Carlo simulations of the time-dependence of $x_S^E$ in a population of cells with perfectly unsynchronized cell cycles. All cells assimilate C at the same cell-specific rate, r. (A) Time-dependence of $x_S^E$ in cells randomly selected from the population (different colors correspond to cells with different initial C content). $x_S^E$ for a dividing cell follows a pattern described by the zig-zag function Z (see Figure 2). For comparison, results calculated based on a model that ignores cell division are shown by dashed lines. (B) Time-dependence of $x_S^E$ for the average cell assimilating C with zero-order kinetics (black solid line), and for a cell that assimilates C with first-order kinetics with the carbon-specific rate k = r/⟨C⟩ (red dashed line overlapping the black solid line). Gray dash-dotted lines show the minimum and maximum values of $x_S^E$ for cells assimilating C with zero-order kinetics. The corresponding width of the interval between the minimum and maximum values of $x_S^E$ is shown in panel (C). Simulations were performed for the same values of ⟨C⟩ and r as those shown in Figure 2.