www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4680914/ in Scientific Reports. I think this represents some concrete molecular progress on the question of how bacteria link growth, replication and division. This was made possible by live-cell imaging of DNA replication so that the various periods of the cell cycle could be imaged and correlations with size and growth quantified. I'm looking forward to seeing the bacterial size control field move beyond the phenomenology of the past two years and get into some molecular mechanisms as we have for budding yeast. How this completely different control system evolved to couple growth and division will form an interesting point of comparison with the eukaryotic system. Onwards!
Posted