Experimental and Conceptual Approaches to Studying Bet Hedging in Microorganisms

Abstract

Bet-hedging strategies are used by organisms to survive inunpredictable environments. To pursue a bet-hedging strategy, anorganism must produce multiple phenotypes from a single genotype. Whatmolecular mechanisms allow this to happen? To address this question, Icreated a synthetic system that displays bet-hedging behavior, anddeveloped a new technique called `TrackScar' to measure the fitnessand stress-resistance of individual cells. I found that bet-hedgingcan be generated by actively sensing the environment, and thatbet-hedging strategies based on active sensing need not bemetabolically costly. These results suggest that to understand howbet-hedging strategies are produced, microorganisms must beexamined in the actual environments that they come from.