Survival of the fattest: Evolutionary trade-offs in cellular resource storage

Cells derive resources from their environments and use them to fuel the biosynthetic processes that determine cell growth. Depending on how responsive the biosynthetic processes are to the availability of intracellular resources, cells can build up different levels of resource storage. Here we use a recent mathematical model of the coarse-grained mechanisms that drive cellular growth to investigate the effects of cellular resource storage on growth. We show that, on the one hand, there is a cost associated with high levels of storage resulting from the loss of stored resources due to dilution. We further show that, on the other hand, high levels of storage can benefit cells in variable environments by increasing biomass production during transitions from one medium to another. Our results thus suggest that cells may face trade-os in their maintenance of resource storage based on the frequency of environmental change.