Establishment of the steady state in glucose-limited chemostat cultures of Klebsiella pneumoniae.

To investigate the relationship between growth rate and concentration of the nutrient that limits growth, 'Klebsiella aerogenes' NCTC 418 (K. pneumoniae) was grown in a glucose-limited chemostat. The actual time required to establish a steady-state glucose concentration exceeded that expected theoretically. Apparently, there is a long-term adaptation of the cells to nutrient limitation. As yet, it is not clear whether this has a phenotypic or genetic origin. In the final steady state, the dependence of the growth rate on glucose concentration could be mathematically described equally well by a hyperbolic and by a logarithmic function.

[1]  D. Tempest,et al.  Chapter XIII The Continuous Cultivation of Micro-organisms: 2. Construction of a Chemostat , 1970 .

[2]  L. Dijkhuizen,et al.  Physiological responses to nutrient limitation. , 1983, Annual review of microbiology.

[3]  D. Tempest,et al.  The chemostat: design and instrumentation. , 1965, Laboratory practice.

[4]  Jacques Monod,et al.  LA TECHNIQUE DE CULTURE CONTINUE THÉORIE ET APPLICATIONS , 1978 .

[5]  A. Matin,et al.  Microbial Selection in Continuous Culture , 1977 .

[6]  W. Hamilton,et al.  Proton movements coupled to lactate and alanine transport in Escherichia coli: isolation of mutants with altered stoichiometry in alanine transport , 1976, Journal of bacteriology.

[7]  J R Roth,et al.  Tandem duplications of the histidine operon observed following generalized transduction in Salmonella typhimurium. , 1976, Journal of molecular biology.

[8]  D. Hartl,et al.  Selection in chemostats. , 1983, Microbiological reviews.

[9]  L. Chao,et al.  Evolution of transposable elements: an IS10 insertion increases fitness in Escherichia coli. , 1985, Molecular biology and evolution.

[10]  M. Höfle,et al.  Long-Term Changes in Chemostat Cultures of Cytophaga johnsonae , 1983, Applied and environmental microbiology.

[11]  E. Powell.  Criteria for the growth of contaminants and mutants in continuous culture. , 1958, Journal of general microbiology.

[12]  K. Hellingwerf,et al.  Thermodynamics of growth. Non-equilibrium thermodynamics of bacterial growth. The phenomenological and the mosaic approach. , 1982, Biochimica et biophysica acta.

[13]  E. Cox,et al.  Selection for high mutation rates in chemostats. , 1974, Genetics.

[14]  Daniel Hartl,et al.  EVOLUTION OF COMPETITIVE ABILITY IN ESCHERICHIA COLI , 1981, Evolution; international journal of organic evolution.

[15]  D. Hartl,et al.  Transposable element IS50 improves growth rate of E. coli cells without transposition , 1983, Cell.

[16]  D. Dykhuizen.  SELECTION FOR TRYPTOPHAN AUXOTROPHS OF ESCHERICHIA COLI IN GLUCOSE‐LIMITED CHEMOSTATS AS A TEST OF THE ENERGY CONSERVATION HYPOTHESIS OF EVOLUTION , 1978, Evolution; international journal of organic evolution.

[17]  B. Corkey,et al.  [65] Assays of intermediates of the citric acid cycle and related compounds by fluorometric enzyme methods , 1969 .

[18]  T. W. James,et al.  Continuous Culture of Microorganisms , 1961 .