Fitness of bacteria is determined both by how fast cells grow when nutrients are abundant and by how well they survive when conditions worsen. Here, we study how prior growth conditions affect the death rate of Escherichia coli during carbon starvation. We control the growth rate prior to starvation either via the carbon source or via a carbon‐limited chemostat. We find a consistent dependence where death rate depends on the prior growth conditions only via the growth rate, with slower growth leading to exponentially slower death. Breaking down the observed death rate into two factors, maintenance rate and recycling yield, reveals that slower growing cells display a decreased maintenance rate per cell volume during starvation, thereby decreasing their death rate. In contrast, the ability to scavenge nutrients from carcasses of dead cells (recycling yield) remains constant. Our results suggest a physiological trade‐off between rapid proliferation and long survival. We explore the implications of this trade‐off within a mathematical model, which can rationalize the observation that bacteria outside of lab environments are not optimized for fast growth.

中文翻译：

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由于维持率降低，大肠杆菌生长较慢，导致其在碳饥饿中的存活时间更长。

细菌的健康状况既取决于营养丰富时细胞的生长速度，也取决于条件恶化时细菌的生存能力。在这里，我们研究了先前的生长条件如何影响碳饥饿期间大肠杆菌的死亡率。我们通过碳源或碳限制恒化器控制饥饿之前的生长速度。我们发现了一种一致的依赖性，即死亡率仅通过增长率取决于先前的生长条件，而较慢的生长导致死亡呈指数级减慢。将观察到的死亡率分解为两个因素，维持率和回收率，表明生长较慢的细胞在饥饿期间表现出单位细胞体积的维持率降低，从而降低了死亡率。相比之下，从死细胞尸体中清除营养物质的能力（回收率）保持不变。我们的结果表明快速增殖和长期存活之间存在生理权衡。我们在数学模型中探索了这种权衡的含义，该模型可以合理化实验室环境之外的细菌并未针对快速生长进行优化的观察结果。