| Comments |
p.1101 right column: "In previous work by Stewart et al. [primary source], it was found that the growth rate of the mother cell decreased cumulatively with replicative age, about 2% per generation. Although [investigators’] results show otherwise, this could be due to the differences in the experimental conditions, e.g., two-dimensional surface on an agar pad (primary source) versus one-dimensional growth channel where fresh liquid medium is constantly supplied (current study). In addition, [they] excluded the data from the first ten generations of replicative age to ensure that [their] results reflect steady-state growth conditions. Nevertheless, [they] note that the average generation times of the mother cells of B/r, MG1655, and lexA3 mutant are in precise agreement with the generation time measured from the growth curves of the liquid culture (see Experimental Procedures). This strongly argues that, in [their] study, it is unlikely that there is a decrease of the growth rate of the mother cell regardless of its replicative age, i.e., all cells are in the same steady state of growth." |