Microbial growth and isothermal microcalorimetry: Growth models and their application to microcalorimetric data

Over the last 10 years use of isothermal microcalorimetry in the biological and biomedical field has been a increasing. Several biomedical applications such as detection and characterization of pathogens, drug testing, parasitology, and tissue engineering have been investigated. Similarly in environmental science isothermal microcalorimetry has been shown to provide insight in soil science or in geomicrobiology. Often it is useful to convert the isothermal microcalorimetry data into biologically meaningful data such as growth rate, lag phase, or maximum growth. In this study we review not only the various approaches used for such conversion but we also carefully look at the advantages, the drawbacks and underlying assumption of each approach. Understanding of these assumptions is a critical point into applying the right model to the right portion of the microcalorimetric data.

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► Emphasis is put on extracting microbial growth parameters from isothermal microcalorimetry data.
► Misconceptions in the interpretation of thermograms from microbial culture are discussed with respect to those parameters.
► Application, advantages and drawbacks of different growth models are discussed for isothermal calorimetry data.