La crescita batterica. IV: La legge di crescita del materiale biologico in una coltura

Ageno, Mario

Atti della Accademia nazionale dei Lincei. Rendiconti della Classe di scienze fisiche, matematiche e naturali, Série 8, Tome 83 (1989) no. 1, pp. 343-349

Résumé

The law of growth of a single bacterial cell, theoretically obtained in a previous paper, is now used to calculate the law of growth of the biological mass in a bacterial culture. The provision of the theory is that this last law of growth is exponential, only if the total biological mass per unit bacterial surface in the culture has a predetermined fixed value. In this case, the doubling time of the total biological mass $\tau_{m}$ is equal to the doubling time $\tau$ of the biological mass of the single cell, and as a rule it is different from that of the number of cells in the culture $\tau_{N}$. Otherwise, a transient term adds itself to the exponential growth term, and such a term cancels out exponentially with an half time $\tau_{m}$. When the equilibrium value of the biological mass per unit surface is reached, it tends to mantain itself also if the culture is refreshed many times. Demonstrating that the transient allowed for by the theory is real, appears as a necessary experimental check of the theory itself.