A new logistic model for bacterial growth.

A new logistic model for bacterial growth was developed in this study. The model is based on a logistic model, which is often applied for biological and ecological population kinetics. The new model is described by a differential equation and contains an additional term for suppression of the growth rate during the lag phase, compared with the original logistic equation. The new model successfully described sigmoidal growth curves of Escherichia coli and Salmonella under various initial conditions. Data for E. coli were obtained from our experiments and data for Salmonella from the literature. When the new model was compared with a modified Gompertz model, which is widely used by many predictive microbiology researchers, it proved to be superior to the Gompertz model. Further, Salmonella growth at varying temperature could be well simulated by the new model. These results indicate that the new model will be a useful tool to predict bacterial growth under various temperature profiles.