Escherichia coil growth dynamics: A three-pool biochemically based description.

A three-pool growth model of an individual Escherichia coli cell is described herein. The model is based on a previously developed chemically structured complex single cell growth model. The reduction in model complexity and the identification of the essential modes of motion, over the time scale of growth, is achieved by temporal decomposition and analysis of hierarchy in relaxation times. The three-pool model faithfully simulates the changes in cell size, cell shape, cell macromolecular composition, DNA initiation and termination periods, and the dependence of cell growth under abiotic glucose limitation. The predictions made by the reduced model compare favorably with both the experimental data and those of the full single cell model (SCM) without any parameter adjustments. The three-pool model has very few significant parameters and has the potential to find immediate practical use in bioreactor design and process control strategies. The model development illustrates the use of modal analysis to yield reduced physiologically realistic dynamic model of complex microbial system such as E. coll.