How different are yeast cells in the same population?

Supervisors: Herwig Bachmann, Frank Bruggeman (P122), Bas Teusink

Recent studies indicate that individual members of microbial cell populations can be very different with respect to their molecular make up.  Some cells have more of protein X than others and vice versa.  This has been explained by the observation that many processes inside cells are probabilistic.  This you can compare with the statistics of throwing a dice.  Sometimes you throw 5 times a 3 in 10 throws and other times only 3. 
In this project we will measure the extent of population heterogeneity in glucose uptake for yeast and Lactococcus cells.  We will use a fluorescent glucose analogue, fluorescent microscopy, and FACS to quantitate this hetereogeneity.  A minimal mathematical model for single cell behavior will be used that can explain the observed heterogeneity.