Experimental and Conceptual Approaches to Studying Bet Hedging in Microorganisms

<p>Bet-hedging strategies are used by organisms to survive in</p><p>unpredictable environments. To pursue a bet-hedging strategy, an</p><p>organism must produce multiple phenotypes from a single genotype. What</p><p>molecular mechanisms allow this to happen? To address this question, I</p><p>created a synthetic system that displays bet-hedging behavior, and</p><p>developed a new technique called `TrackScar' to measure the fitness</p><p>and stress-resistance of individual cells. I found that bet-hedging</p><p>can be generated by actively sensing the environment, and that</p><p>bet-hedging strategies based on active sensing need not be</p><p>metabolically costly. These results suggest that to understand how</p><p>bet-hedging strategies are produced, microorganisms must be</p><p>examined in the actual environments that they come from.</p>

Dissertation