Question

. A culture is inoculated at noon with 6,610 cfu/ml. The bacteria have a one-hour lag time. At 8 pm, the population is determined to be 400,100,000 cfu/ml. What is the generation time in minutes?

a. 90 minutes
b. 60 minutes
c. 30 minutes
d. 120 minutes

Answer 1

The generation time, also known as doubling time, is the time it takes for a population of cells to double through one round of binary fission. In this case, the generation time is approximately 28.29 minutes.

Step-by-step explanation:

The generation time, also known as doubling time, is the time it takes for a population of cells to double through one round of binary fission. In this case, the bacteria population started with 6,610 cfu/ml at noon and reached 400,100,000 cfu/ml at 8 pm. To find the generation time, we need to calculate the number of generations that occurred during that time.

Number of generations = log2(final population/initial population)

Number of generations = log2(400,100,000/6,610) ≈ 16.92

Since there are 60 minutes in an hour, the generation time in minutes can be calculated by:

Generation time = total time (in minutes) / number of generations

Generation time = 8 hours x 60 minutes / 16.92 ≈ 28.29 minutes

Therefore, the generation time is approximately 28.29 minutes.