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Appl. Environ. Microbiol., Feb 1995, 741-748, Vol 61, No. 2
S Moller, CS Kristensen, LK Poulsen, JM Carstensen and S Molin
A fast routine method for estimating bacterial cell growth rates by using
the metachromatic dye acridine orange is described. The method allows
simultaneous estimates of cellular RNA and DNA contents of single cells.
Acridine orange staining can be used as a nonspecific supplement to
quantitative species-specific hybridizations with fluorescence-labelled
ribosomal probes to estimate the single-cell concentration of RNA. By
automated analysis of digitized images of stained cells, we determined four
independent growth rate-related parameters: cellular RNA and DNA contents,
cell volume, and the frequency of dividing cells in a cell population.
These parameters were used to compare physiological states of
liquid-suspended and surface-growing Pseudomonas putida KT2442 in chemostat
cultures. The major finding is that the correlation between substrate
availability and cellular growth rate found for the free-living cells was
not observed for the surface-bound cells; in contrast, the data indicate an
almost constant growth rate for attached cells which was independent of the
dilution rate in the chemostat.
Copyright © 1995, American Society for Microbiology
Bacterial Growth on Surfaces: Automated Image Analysis for Quantification of Growth Rate-Related Parameters
Department of Microbiology and Institute of Mathematical Modelling, The Technical University of Denmark, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark
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