Microbial growth on substitutable substrates: characterizing the consumer-resource relationship
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 3, 2026

Monitoring Intraspecies Competition in a Bacterial Cell Population by Cocultivation of Fluorescently Labelled Strains
Published on: January 18, 2014
R Ramakrishna1, D Ramkrishna, A E Konopka
1School of Chemical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA. ramkrish@ecn.purdue.edu
Abstract:
In this article, we consider the growth of microorganisms on mixtures of carbon sources and characterize the consumer-resource relationship for this system. The characteristic features observed for the growth of a single microorganism on a pair of carbon sources allow a representation of this relationship based on a general paradigm for resource classification. This representation is verified using a comprehensive model for microbial growth on carbon sources. The results show that for the same pair of carbon sources the qualitative nature of the consumer-resource relationship changes with changing specific growth rate, and therefore a change in the identity of the rate-limiting substrate(s).
Related Concept Videos
Microbial Interactions: Competition
Microbial Growth Measurement: Indirect Methods
Microbial Nutrition
Microbial Growth Media
Microbial Growth Measurement: Direct Methods
Evolution of New Traits in Microbes

