Macrokinetic grounds for a model of microbial growth on a substrate with a single major component

Abstract

The dependency of experimental microbial growth data on the concentration of a major substrate component in phase space follows the law of a deformed bell curve and, until now, has not had a widely accepted rational. In the present work, a theoretical equation of this dependency at a fixed time was derived from the equation of the dependency of growth on time for a single concentration of a major component, which was previously obtained using a non-stationary non-equilibrium approach. The validity of the equation was established by comparison to experimental data from an independent source. The equation allows one to find intervals in the phase space of the dependency of growth on the initial concentration of the major component of the substrate that qualitatively vary by sign (plus or minus) and direction (increasing or decreasing) of the change of: a) growth, b) rates, and c) acceleration of its change in response to the change in the concentration of a major component of the substrate.