Cell Interaction

The most basic description of microbial growth assumes a single species undergoing balanced metabolism with unlimited availability of substrates—with all cells behaving identically; this lies the foundations for the unsegregated approach—coupled to the hypothesis of cells devoid of structure, or any other form of heterogeneity arising from existence/operation of organelles or otherwise. The associated growth rate has traditionally been expressed in an autonomous manner—i.e., as explicit function of only the state of the system, rather than its past history or time. Owing to the aforementioned absence of segregation and structure, a single descriptor of state is allowed—namely, number of cells, n, or overall biomass, m, pert unit volume; hence, growth rate, rX, will abide to.