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Updated: May 29, 2026

The Use of Chemostats in Microbial Systems Biology
Published on: October 14, 2013
Effects of spatial structure and diffusion on the performances of the chemostat
Ihab Haidar1, Alain Rapaport, Frédéric Gérard
1UMR INRA/SupAgro MISTEA and EPI INRA/INRIA MODEMIC, 2 pl. Viala, Montpellier, France. ihabhaidar@yahoo.com
Abstract:
Given hydric capacity and nutrient flow of a chemostat-like system, we analyse the influence of a spatial structure on the output concentrations at steady-state. Three configurations are compared: perfectly-mixed, serial and parallel with diffusion rate. We show the existence of a threshold on the input concentration of nutrient for which the benefits of the serial and parallel configurations over the perfectly-mixed one are reversed. In addition, we show that the dependency of the output concentrations on the diffusion rate can be non-monotonic, and give precise conditions for the diffusion effect to be advantageous. The study encompasses dead-zone models.
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