From frozen to flowing time, and back

In this talk I will address how life shapes time in a simple bacterial cell, and examine the interplay between homeostasis and adaptation in this context. First, I will first establish that intergenerational bacterial cell size homeostasis is maintained under appropriate growth conditions, using our high-precision data on growth and division of individual C. Crescentus cells. Next, the emergent simplicities revealed by these data. Following this, a fitting-free theoretical framework, consistent with observed scaling laws and phenomenology. This naturally leads to a proposal for the underlying mechanistic model. Finally, the extension to time-varying growth conditions, and new emergent simplicities.