Modelling the growth dynamics of interacting mixed cultures: a case of amensalism

In this work, a specific membrane bioreactor was used to perform co-cultures of two Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast strains: a killer strain and a sensitive strain. Biomass could be segregated into four groups: viable killer yeasts, dead killer yeasts, viable sensitive yeasts and dead sensitive yeasts. An existing mathematical model describing the population dynamics in the mixed killer/sensitive cultures was confronted with the new experimental data. As it gave poor accuracy, some improvements were proposed and tested. In particular, a lag phase before the beginning of the lethal interaction between the two strains was introduced, in correspondence to the experimental observations.