Protein titration as the driver of precision control in bacteria

A long-standing puzzle in bacterial cell physiology is why E. coli produces ~30 times more initiator proteins than required for DNA replication. Most of these initiators are sequestered by the chromosome without contributing directly to replication initiation at the origin. Our previous theoretical work demonstrated that this titration mechanism enhances the synchrony of initiation, with the coefficient of variation (CV) in initiation timing scaling as 1/N rather than the 1/√N characteristic of Poisson processes, where N represents the number of initiator proteins. In this talk, we will present an experimental investigation of this titration-based initiation control, shedding new light on precision control in bacteria.