Bacterial economics: adaptation to stress conditions via stage-wise changes in the response mechanism

Common features of microbial adaptation are analysed with mathematical models and extended to stress conditions when the bacterial population declines before growing again. A parallel is drawn between bacterial and human communities in terms of non-mutation-based adaptation (acclimation) to stress. For a case study, the behaviour of Escherichia coli under osmotic stress, is detailed. It is suggested that stress modelling adaptation should be the focus of further developments in predictive food microbiology.