The influence of nutrition and temperature on the growth of colonies of Escherichia coli K12

Abstract

Growth of Escherichia coli was faster in liquid cultures than on the same medium solidified with agar. Colony profiles indicated a common basic structure with a size variation due to nutritional conditions. Radial growth rates were linear and height also increased approximately linearly, especially in the early part of the growth period. The ratio of rate of height increase to diameter increase depended on nutrition. Conditions favouring rapid growth led to faster radical growth relative to height increase. A rise in incubation temperature led to increases in height and in diameter: however, diameter increased relatively more than height. These results are discussed in terms of the structure of the colony.

Oxygen Profiles in, and in the Agar Beneath, Colonies of Bacillus Cereus, Staphylococcus Albus and Escherichia Coli

“…Spatial heterogeneity implies that the global colony mass increase is only a crude average of a range of values. Indeed Lewis & Wimpenny (1981) showed that mass increase, though close to exponential in the early stages of growth, gradually dropped to lower values as parts of the colony became increasingly nutrient limited.…”

On the sensitivity of forward scattering patterns from bacterial colonies to media composition

“…Several other studies also reported similar observations for Aerobacter aerogenes [1], Serratia liquefaciens on minimal AgroBacterium (AB) medium [11], and Candida utilis on glucose (l%), peptone (0.5%) and yeast extract (0.5%) media [12]. Some also explain this as the adverse effect of excess nutrition [1] while others show the dramatic changes (30 times different for tryptone soya broth and acetate-salts) in radial growth rates depending on the types of nutrition [7]. In the second set of experiments ( Figure 5), the yeast extract in the LB medium showed some proportionality to the nutrition concentration up to 0.5%.…”

“…The effect of different media such as trypicase soy agar (TSA) and glucose salt agar (GSA) on the colony growth revealed that the rate of height increase was dependent on the media compositions and humidity [2]. Some also suggested the importance of oxygen and nutrition availability on the colony growth rate and profile for swarming and non-swarming species [6,7]. Wimpenny [5] was the first to measure the colony profile among different species and found that the profile had two zones: concave leading edge (periphery) and flat center area.…”

An in vivo selection method to optimize trans-splicing ribozymes

“…We hypothesized that this may be because the in vivo selection used growth on plates, whereas the doubling times were determined in liquid culture, which differ in their requirements on the cells. The difference between growth on plates and in liquid medium is caused by the diffusion of nutrients and oxygen into the bacterial colony (Reyrolle and Letelier 1979;Lewis and Wimpenny 1981), which limits the growth on plates but not in liquid culture. To test this hypothesis, we measured the growth of all clones for growth on plates containing chloramphenicol that were selected at least three times in the selection.…”