Extensive quantitative experiments on the model bacterium
E. coli
have
established that many bacterial behaviors are organized in simple
manners in accordance to the rate of cell growth. The existence of these
simple empirical relations (growth laws) despite myriads of complex
biomolecular interactions suggests a tremendous degree of
"dimensional reduction" occurring in living cells, reminiscent of
dimension reduction in thermodynamics, whereby e.g., the behavior of gas
particles interacting via complex inter-molecular forces is captured by
the ideal gas law. In this talk, I will describe how the bacterial
growth laws can be used to make accurate predictions of cell behaviors,
and discuss how the magic of dimensional reduction can be accomplished
by cells through clever strategies of molecular signaling.