Effects of molecular noise on cell size control

Abstract

Cells employ control strategies to maintain a stable size. Dividing at a target size (the `sizer' strategy) is thought to produce the tightest size distribution. However, this result follows from phenomenological models that ignore the molecular mechanisms required to implement the strategy. Here we investigate a simple mechanistic model for exponentially growing cells whose division is triggered at a molecular abundance threshold. We find that size noise inherits the molecular noise and is consequently minimized not by the sizer but by the `adder' strategy, where a cell divides after adding a target amount to its birth size. We derive a lower bound on size noise that agrees with publicly available data from six microfluidic studies on Escherichia coli bacteria.