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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: ElGamel, Motasem, Ribaudo, Lucas, Mugler, Andrew
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16066
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author ElGamel, Motasem
Ribaudo, Lucas
Mugler, Andrew
author_facet ElGamel, Motasem
Ribaudo, Lucas
Mugler, Andrew
contents Cells control their size to cope with noise during growth and division. Eukaryotic cells exhibiting "sizer" control (targeting a specific size before dividing) may rely on molecular concentration thresholds, but simple implementations of this strategy are not stable. We derive a general criterion for concentration-based sizer control and demonstrate it with a mechanistic model that resolves the instability by using multistage progression towards division. We show that if molecular dynamics in one stage satisfy the sizer criterion, then sizer control follows for the whole progression. We predict that perturbations to the molecular dynamics in non-sizer stages shift the size statistics without disrupting sizer control, consistent with recent experiments in fission yeast.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_16066
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle General mechanism for concentration-based cell size control
ElGamel, Motasem
Ribaudo, Lucas
Mugler, Andrew
Biological Physics
Cells control their size to cope with noise during growth and division. Eukaryotic cells exhibiting "sizer" control (targeting a specific size before dividing) may rely on molecular concentration thresholds, but simple implementations of this strategy are not stable. We derive a general criterion for concentration-based sizer control and demonstrate it with a mechanistic model that resolves the instability by using multistage progression towards division. We show that if molecular dynamics in one stage satisfy the sizer criterion, then sizer control follows for the whole progression. We predict that perturbations to the molecular dynamics in non-sizer stages shift the size statistics without disrupting sizer control, consistent with recent experiments in fission yeast.
title General mechanism for concentration-based cell size control
topic Biological Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.16066