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Updated: Apr 15, 2026

Precise, High-throughput Analysis of Bacterial Growth
Published on: September 19, 2017
A growth-rate composition formula for the growth of E.coli on co-utilized carbon substrates
Rutger Hermsen1, Hiroyuki Okano2, Conghui You2
1Department of Physics, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA TBB Group, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Abstract:
When bacteria are cultured in medium with multiple carbon substrates, they frequently consume these substrates simultaneously. Building on recent advances in the understanding of metabolic coordination exhibited by Escherichia coli cells through cAMP-Crp signaling, we show that this signaling system responds to the total carbon-uptake flux when substrates are co-utilized and derive a mathematical formula that accurately predicts the resulting growth rate, based only on the growth rates on individual substrates.
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