How microbes can achieve balanced growth in a fluctuating environment

A microbial colony needs several essential nutrients in order to grow. Moreover, the colony requires these nutrients in fixed combinations, which are dictated by the chemical composition of its biomass. Unfortunately, ambient availabilities of the various nutrients vary all the time. This poses the question of how microbes can achieve balanced growth. The present solution to this problem is novel in that the allocation of molecular building blocks among assimilatory machineries within the cell is regarded as dynamic. This paper shows that allocation can be adapted so as to achieve balanced growth, nearly regardless of environmental conditions. Moreover, it is shown that a feedback mechanism, which monitors internal stores, is able to achieve this allocation.