As bacteria transition from exponential to stationary phase, they change substantially in size, morphology, growth and expression profiles. These responses also vary between individual cells, but it has proved difficult to track cell lineages along the growth curve to determine the progression of events or correlations between how individual cells enter and exit dormancy. Here, we developed a platform for tracking more than 10⁵ parallel cell lineages in dense and changing cultures, independently validating that the imaged cells closely track batch populations. Initial applications show that for both Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis, growth changes from an ‘adder’ mode in exponential phase to mixed ‘adder–timers’ entering stationary phase, and then a near-perfect ‘sizer’ upon exit—creating broadly distributed cell sizes in stationary phase but rapidly returning to narrowly distributed sizes upon exit. Furthermore, cells that undergo more divisions when entering stationary phase suffer reduced survival after long periods of dormancy but are the only cells observed that persist following antibiotic treatment.

当细菌从指数期过渡到稳定期时，它们的大小、形态、生长和表达谱会发生巨大变化。这些反应在个体细胞之间也有所不同，但事实证明，很难沿着生长曲线追踪细胞谱系，以确定事件的进展或个体细胞如何进入和退出休眠之间的相关性。在这里，我们开发了一个平台，用于跟踪密集且变化的培养物中超过 10 ^{5 个}平行细胞谱系，独立验证成像细胞是否密切跟踪批次群体。初步应用表明，对于大肠杆菌和枯草芽孢杆菌，生长从指数期的“加法器”模式转变为进入稳定期的混合“加法器-计时器”，然后退出时接近完美的“大小调整器”——在稳定期产生广泛分布的细胞尺寸，但迅速恢复到窄分布的尺寸退出时。此外，进入稳定期时经历更多分裂的细胞在长时间休眠后存活率降低，但这是观察到的唯一在抗生素治疗后持续存在的细胞。