The variation associated with different observable characteristics—phenotypes—at the cellular scale underpins homeostasis and the fitness of living systems. However, if and how these noisy phenotypic traits shape properties at the population level remains poorly understood. Here we report that phenotypic noise self-regulates with growth and coordinates collective structural organization, the kinetics of topological defects and the emergence of active transport around confluent colonies. We do this by cataloguing key phenotypic traits in bacteria growing under diverse conditions. Our results reveal a statistically precise critical time for the transition from a monolayer biofilm to a multilayer biofilm, despite the strong noise in the cell geometry and the colony area at the onset of the transition. This reveals a mitigation mechanism between the noise in the cell geometry and the growth rate that dictates the narrow critical time window. By uncovering how rectification of phenotypic noise homogenizes correlated collective properties across colonies, our work points at an emergent strategy that confluent systems employ to tune active transport, buffering inherent heterogeneities associated with natural cellular environment settings.

在细胞尺度上与不同可观察特征（表型）相关的变异是动态平衡和生命系统适应性的基础。然而，这些嘈杂的表型特征是否以及如何在种群水平上塑造特性仍然知之甚少。在这里，我们报告表型噪声随着生长而自我调节，并协调集体结构组织、拓扑缺陷的动力学和融合菌落周围主动运输的出现。我们通过对在不同条件下生长的细菌的关键表型特征进行分类来做到这一点。我们的结果揭示了从单层生物膜过渡到多层生物膜的统计上精确的关键时间，尽管在过渡开始时细胞几何形状和菌落区域存在强烈的噪音。这揭示了细胞几何形状中的噪声与决定窄临界时间窗口的生长速率之间的缓解机制。通过揭示表型噪声的校正如何使菌落之间的相关集体属性均质化，我们的工作指向了一种紧急策略，该策略采用融合系统来调整主动运输，缓冲与自然细胞环境设置相关的固有异质性。