Fig. 4: Yeast subpopulations follow a growth-viability tradeoff that is nitrogen source dependent.

a, b Bimodality scores (Hartigan’s diptest; Methods) and maximal growth rates across all NLIM conditions. Bar plot represents the mean ± SEM of a flow cytometry experiments for cells exposed to a 6 h downshift performed on different days (n = 3) and b growth curves of biological replicates (n = 3). Purple bars represent the NSTARVE condition where no nitrogen is present. Significance scores denotes conditions where all replicates had a p value (Hartigan’s diptest) of at most p < 0.05 (*), p < 0.005 (**) or p < 0.0005 (***). Bimodality scores are shown as arbitrary units (abbreviated a.u.). c Tradeoff between bimodality and growth, shown in a, b, respectively. Regression lines are indicated in yellow and magenta for NLIM and NREP, respectively. Spearman correlation scores are indicated for each regression line. NLIM-CYS and NLIM-LYS were omitted from the plot due to poor growth performances. d, e Viability rates for cells exposed to a 4 h downshift and sorted based on size and pRPL28 intensities using FACS. Yellow and pink samples indicate high and low GFP fractions. Dark purple samples indicate cells passed through FACS but not gated. Error bars represent the mean ± SEM (n = 4). Significance scores denotes p-value of unpaired two-sided t test with p < 0.05 (*), p < 0.005 (**), p < 0.0005 (***) and p < 0.00005 (****). f, g Growth resumption in rich media (YPD) for sorted and unsorted fractions from e, f. f the shaded area represents the 95% confidence interval (n = 4) of the best fit using the ggplot2 function geom_smooth with “y ~ exp(x)” as fit function. g lag times were calculated as the time needed (discretized in 30 min interval) to achieve two doublings. Significance scores denote the p value of paired two-sided t test as in e. h Tradeoff between survival and growth resumption (measured as the inverse of the lag time). Black line represents the regression and the associated value the Spearman correlation. Circles and triangles represent NLIM and NREP conditions, respectively. d–h purple, light orange and light red colours represent unsorted (not gated), high and low fractions, respectively.