Final answer:
The minimum time for E. coli bacteria, which takes 20 minutes per binary fission cycle, to produce more than 1000 cells is 200 minutes, making all the provided options incorrect.
Step-by-step explanation:
The least time E. coli bacteria would take to produce more than 1000 cells through binary fission, with each cycle taking 20 minutes, would be 140 minutes.
To find this, let's calculate the population after each 20-minute cycle starting with a single cell: after 20 minutes you have 2 cells, after 40 minutes, you have 4 cells, and this continues exponentially. Following this pattern, we find that in 120 minutes (6 cycles of binary fission), there would be 26 or 64 cells. After another 20 minutes (140 minutes total), the population becomes 27 which is 128 cells, and finally, after 160 minutes, it produces 28 or 256 cells. However, to produce more than 1000 cells, we would need at least 10 cycles of binary fission, since 210 equals 1024 cells, thus requiring at least 200 minutes.
The original answers provided do not have a correct response based on the calculation. None of the options (a, b, c, d) provided in the question would result in more than 1000 E. coli cells; the minimum time to exceed 1000 cells is 200 minutes.