As Described in "A Note About Bacterial Reproduction -- and the "Culture

question 65

Multiple Choice

As described in "A Note About Bacterial Reproduction -- and the "Culture Bias,"" the organism Epulopiscium does not divide by binary fission.Rather, each cell increases in size and divides to produce multiple daughter cells that are held within the original cell well.After lysis, those daughters are released to repeat the process. Assuming Epulopiscium could be grown in pure culture in the laboratory in broth and on solid media (it currently cannot) , which method would be best for measuring the increase in biomass during growth?

• A)The viable plate count; each colony derives from a single cell and the number of colonies equals the number of cells.
• B)Turbidity readings from a spectrophotometer; the increase in biomass will directly vary with the turbidity of the culture.
• C)Chemostat growth; it will prevent the culture from entering the death phase.
• D)Direct microscopic count; the experimenter can directly count the number of cells and extrapolate to the biomass.