| Microorganisms have a large and varied repertoire of responses at their disposal to cope with environmental fluctuations. Organisms may employ two general types of mechanisms to trigger these responses: (1) sensor-based mechanisms, which couple the result of a measurement to an appropriate response, and (2) stochastic switching mechanisms, which maintain a diversity of responses at the population level without direct sensing. In this talk, a model will be presented that describes both cases, and identifies conditions that favor each type of mechanism. Population dynamics of this model will then be described using an analogy with polymer theory. |
|