In this article, a single-cell growth and imaging system was used to study how the growth of single cells of Pseudomonas aeruginosa was affected by temperature shifts. An individual-based modeling was conducted to predict the growth of bacterial single cells. We found that shifts to lower temperatures lengthened the division times of P. aeruginosa single cells, whereas shifts to higher temperature caused a rapid shortening of the division times. The coefficient of variation of the division time decreased as the magnitude of the temperature shifts increased which suggested that the variability of the growth of single P. aeruginosa cells was increased with bigger temperature shifts. Furthermore, the individual-based modeling proposed in this study turned out to be a useful way for predicting the stochastic growth of single bacterial cells under nonconstant temperature conditions. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONSIt was deduced that studying the microbial dynamics at the single cell level, which take into account the growth viability and uncertainty of bacterial single cells, could help to establish a more reliable set of microbe-influenced food shelf life and food safety criteria.

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