| Abstract | lmportantly, our model reveals a thrifty strategy employed by bacteria, by which upon sensing impending depletion of a substrate, the limiting substrate is conserved and utilized later during starvation to delay cell death . |
| Conclusion | Integration of previously known processes reveals a thrifty strategy of bacteria, by which upon sensing impending starvation, cells repress nutrient consumption for biomass increase and use the remaining nutrient in the environment to delay cell death . |
| Conclusion | The benefit of such thrifty behavior is obvious; it delays cell death . |
| Conclusion | However, in homogenous environments where the nutrients conserved to delay cell death by one species could be accessed by other species of bacteria, such behavior would not be beneficial. |
| Survival of starving cells is cell-density-dependent and biphasic | The black dashed lines are plotted for a visual guide and its slope, —/40 (= -0.018 hr '1), corresponds to the rate of cell death in these cultures. |