Nongenetic individuality, changeability, and inheritance in bacterial behavior

Isogenic populations often display remarkable levels of phenotypic diversity even in constant, homogeneous environments. Such diversity results from differences between individuals (“nongenetic individuality”) as well as changes during individuals’ lifetimes (“changeability”). Yet, studies that capture and quantify both sources of diversity are scarce. Here we measure the swimming behavior of hundreds of Escherichia coli bacteria continuously over two generations and use a model-independent method for quantifying behavior to show that the behavioral space of E. coli is low-dimensional, with variations occurring mainly along two independent and interpretable behavioral traits. By statistically decomposing the diversity in these two traits, we find that individuality is the main source of diversity, while changeability makes a smaller but significant contribution. Finally, we show that even though traits of closely related individuals can be remarkably different, they exhibit positive correlations across generations that imply nongenetic inheritance. The model-independent experimental and theoretical framework developed here paves the way for more general studies of microbial behavioral diversity.