Figure 3.

Sloppy and stiff variables in trapped bacteria

(A) Illustration of the main phenotypic variables in a cell cycle. Presented for one cycle are the initial size x₀, final size at division x_τ, exponential growth-rate α, interdivision time τ, and division ratio $f=\frac{x_0\left(n\right)}{x_{\tau }\left(n-1\right)}$, relating the current cycle n to the previous one n - 1. The log-fold growth is ϕ = ατ, added length Δ = x_τ - x_0, and size ratio $r=f{e}^{\varphi }$.

(B) Variance decomposition conditioned on trap: ${\text{Γ}}_{\text{trap}}$ for all variables, estimated from a set of mother machine experiments performed under identical conditions. Vertical bar heights are the fraction of variance contributed from different set points among traps, whereas the remaining fraction complementing to 1 represents the contribution of temporal fluctuations. The gray horizontal bar is the noise level (finite size sampling effect) estimated by running the same analysis on artificial lineages drawn at random from the pooled ensemble (see STAR Methods, Quantification and Statistical Analysis).