Seminar "Microbial growth laws from simple kinetics of ribosome self-replication" by Sarah Kostinski

• Date: Tuesday, April 2nd
• Time: 10:00-11:00
• Venue: C016, Lab1
• Speaker: Sarah Kostinski (Tel Aviv University)

Title: Microbial growth laws from simple kinetics of ribosome self-replication

Abstract: Cells grow until they double in size, at which point they divide.  The time it takes a cell to double is called the doubling time.  Microbial growth laws relate the doubling time to the internal composition of the cell, allowing prediction of quantities such as the cell’s mass fraction of ribosomal protein.  In this talk, we will examine two growth laws which result from the kinetics of ribosome self-replication.  The first, demonstrating a linear relation between growth rate and the ribosomal protein mass fraction, is already known.  But in fact, we show how similar principles lead to an additional growth law for the protein mass fraction of RNA polymerases which synthesize ribosomal RNA.  The theory is in excellent agreement with publicly available data for unicellular organisms such as E. coli.