Divya Choudhary

Unveiling hidden variables in stressed bacteria

@cp-cellreports.bsky.social Review by @divyach.bsky.social and @maxencevincent.bsky.social

www.cell.com/cell-reports...

Unveiling hidden variables in stressed bacteria Noise in bacterial stress responses is often dismissed as mere randomness. While true stochasticity exists, much variation reflects hidden variables—cell state, history, and microenvironment—that are ...

Unveiling hidden variables in stressed bacteria: Cell Reports www.cell.com/cell-reports...

6/ We also highlight modern toolkits to tackle this: microfluidic platform integrated with machine learning and live-cell imaging, single-cell transcriptomics, etc. letting us measure and predict how hidden variables shape single cell outcomes.

5/ Not all variability is predictable. Some events, like spontaneous mutations, are truly random. But bacteria combine deterministic circuits with stochastic events, and the challenge is teasing apart the two.

4/ Classic examples -oxidative stress response, and DNA repair - show that variability becomes structured once these hidden factors are considered.

3/ We argue that apparent noise often reflects hidden variables: measurable cell-, gene-, or environment-level states that can bias outcomes.

2/ Phenotypic heterogeneity has long been framed as irreducible randomness. That framework has been powerful - but it’s not the full story.

1/ With @maxencevincent.bsky.social, we ask: when single bacterial cells behave differently under stress, is it really just “noise”?
Read more @cp-cellreports.bsky.social :
Unveiling hidden variables in stressed bacteria (doi.org/10.1016/j.ce...)

Submission open for the ninth YBM Meeting (deadline - 19th February)! Abstract submission link: forms.gle/SBeQeAp9MR2U...

We are looking for a motivated Technical Assistant (m/f/d) with expertise in imaging and laboratory management to join the Bacterial Infection Ecology Lab @helmholtzhzi.bsky.social.
Apply here (deadline: 12 February 2026): jobs.helmholtz-hzi.de/job/Braunsch...

The eighth session of YBM is coming up next week. Join us for two exciting talks on Monday (2nd February 2026) at 11am (EST). Mark your calendars🗓️: tinyurl.com/29b7yk47 Zoom Meeting link: sites.google.com/view/theoret...

Deadline approaching!

Deadline approaching! Submit your abstracts here - forms.gle/SBeQeAp9MR2U...

Mark your calendars!! 🗓️ The third Young Biophysicists Meeting will be held on the coming Monday (May 5th) from 11am - 12pm EST. We have four exciting talks lined up for you, see you all soon! Find out more : shorturl.at/4oKNe

Very thrilled to receive the HFSP postdoctoral fellowship!! Very excited to be part of the HFSP community and grateful for the opportunity to work on ‘Dissecting bacterial defense to antibiotics’.

🚨 Today, Friday 28/02 at 15:30 EU time, Rinke van Tatenhove-Pel (TU Delft) will present

Population dynamics in spatially structured environments

at the Population Dynamics Seminars!

We are sorry we can't send an email reminder, due to a technical problem

Mark your calendars!! 🗓️
The first Young Biophysicists Meeting will be held on the coming Monday (March 3rd) from 11am - 12pm EST. We have four exciting talks lined up for you, see you all soon! Find out more : shorturl.at/4oKNe

The Oxford U. Foster and Slack labs are hiring! A chance to work in bleeding edge microbiome science with some really great mentors @mucosalimmunology.bsky.social

www.fosterlab.uk/vacancies

🚨NEWS!

We are organising a new monthly event:

The Young Biophysicists Virtual Meetings

where early career researchers can present their work in a friendly environment. All the info and abstract submission on our website

sites.google.com/view/theoret...

Host by Divya Choudhary and Satyam Anand

5/ Very grateful to Stephan Uphoff , Kevin Foster and all the members of the Uphoff and Foster group for constant support and feedback!

4/ Gene expression patterns relate to individual and collective cell behavior of bacteria under oxidative stress.

3/ Our findings reveal how bacterial populations use simple regulatory principles to coordinate stress responses in both space and time.

2/ Rapid and coordinated regulation of stress response genes is critical for survival in a changing environment. Using single-cell imaging of transcriptional reporters, we follow the bacterial stress response under continuous hydrogen peroxide treatment.

The master regulator OxyR orchestrates bacterial oxidative stress response genes in space and time Bacteria rewire gene expression to survive stress, but the logic of these changes can remain elusive in bulk studies. Using single-cell imaging, Choudhary et al. reveal that the gene expression patter...

1/ Excited to share my final PhD work out now!
The master regulator OxyR orchestrates bacterial oxidative stress response genes in space and time