Characteristics and significance of the physiological patterns accompanying growth limitation.

Baarda, I. F. (Iowa State University, Ames) and W. R. Lockhart. Characteristics and significance of the physiological patterns accompanying growth limitation. J. Bacteriol. 84:1085-1093. 1962.-The physiological characteristics of several related strains of Escherichia coli were studied during the transition from exponential growth to stationary phase in defined media with limiting concentrations of the carbon or nitrogen source. The metabolic changes typical of this transition, which often are set in motion before exhaustion of the limiting nutrient has occurred, appear to consist of a series of shifts in the relative emphasis placed on competing reaction sequences leading, respectively, to cell division, protoplasmic synthesis, or cell maintenance. This process of biochemical differentiation has characteristic patterns which are qualitatively distinct for particular limiting nutrients and quantitatively different among strains. Correlation of specific metabolic patterns with the characteristic values of certain growth constants for each strain permits hypotheses concerning the physiological significance of these constants.