Award details

Modeling bacterial lag phase

Reference	BBS/E/F/00042230
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Dr Maria Pin Arias
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	Quadram Institute Bioscience
Department	Quadram Institute Bioscience Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	120,800
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/2009
End date	31/03/2010
Duration	12 months

Abstract

Exponential growth rate can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy as a function of the current growth environment. Conversely, the duration of lag phase can be highly variable and single-cell studies have shown that it is influenced not only by the current growth environment but also by the previous history of the cells. The molecular mechanisms underlying lag phase remain to be characterized. A network-science approach is applied to identify and interpret the differences at the transcriptional level between populations of young and old cells undergoing lag phase. To do this, the lag-phase transcription profile of cells originated from an early stationary phase culture (young cells) will be compared with that of cells originated from a culture starved in stationary phase for 16 days (old cells). A genome scale network will be constructed according to the metabolic pathways, functional roles, transcriptional regulation and predicted operon composition of E. coli. Our aim is to quantify and compare the complexity of the intracellular events during the lag phase of cells of different ages. In addition, predicting the duration of the lag phase of a bacterial population and the transitions from exponential to lag phase and vice-versa under fluctuating environmental conditions will be undertaken in order to develop models providing qualitatively better predictions. This involves an increase of complexity in the modelling approaches to include the lag period when predicting the impact of food environments on bacterial population dynamics and also requires a greater complexity in the experimental design to devise the effect of previous environments on the bacterial response to the current conditions.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Microbial Food Safety, Microbiology, Systems Biology
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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