Statistical analysis of the patterns of spore formation in Bacillus subtilis

A description of the patterns of sporulation in chains of Bacillus subtilis cells has been obtained by fitting a statistical model to data obtained from a resuspended culture. The underlying assumptions of this model are: (a) resuspension causes an immediate response in the growing bacteria which is necessary for subsequent sporulation; (b) the probability of this response occurring is the same for all the bacteria present at the time of resuspension; (c) after resuspension some of the bacteria pass through a single round of cell division to produce a pair of sporulating bacteria, while the rest divide twice to produce four; and (d) the two sub-populations described in (c) differ in their ability to complete sporulation.