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Integration of growth laws with single-cell observations

Determine how empirical growth laws defined for population averages can be integrated with single-cell observations, establishing whether and how single-cell variability and resource-allocation dynamics produce the population-level relationships.

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Background

Growth laws have primarily been framed at the population level, yet modern techniques increasingly reveal single-cell heterogeneity. The authors point to the gap between these perspectives.

Resolving this issue is essential for unifying population-average frameworks with mechanistic models of stochastic single-cell behavior and gene-expression noise.

References

Many open questions remain, e.g.: Which regulatory mechanisms determine responses in fluctuating or stressful environments? To what extent are growth laws conserved across organisms? Can we integrate growth laws for population averages with single-cell observations to uncover new complexities? Can the framework developed for describing physiology be extended to ecologically interacting organisms? What are the evolutionary drivers behind these laws, and what constraints do they impose? We believe these questions will drive many of the future advances in quantitative biology.

— The Hands-On Growth Laws Theory Cookbook (2507.19194 - Droghetti et al., 25 Jul 2025) in Section 1, A Brief Introduction to Growth laws (Where is the frontier?)