Aging may be a conditional strategic choice and not an inevitable outcome for bacteria

Abstract

Aging is known in all organisms that have different somatic and reproductive cells or in unicellular organisms that divide asymmetrically. Bacteria that divide symmetrically were believed to be immune to natural aging. The demonstration of functionally asymmetric division and aging in Escherichia coli recently has challenged this belief and led to the suggestion that aging might be inevitable for all life forms. We modeled the effects of symmetric and asymmetric division in bacteria to examine selective advantages of the alternative strategies of division. Aging of cell components was modeled by using a modified Leslie matrix framework. The model suggests that asymmetric division accompanied by aging and death of some cells results in a higher growth rate but a reduced growth yield. Symmetric division with or without gradual replacement of the old components, on the other hand, slows down the growth rate but may increase growth yield over a wide range of conditions. Thus, aging and immortality can be selected under different sets of conditions, and this selection may also lead to a tradeoff between growth rate and growth yield.