A STRUCTURED MATHEMATICAL-MODEL FOR A CLASS OF ORGANISMS .2. APPLICATION OF THE MODEL TO OTHER STRAINS

Mathematical modelling of growth and production behaviour of microorga nisms is very time consuming, especially when unbalanced growth is tak en into consideration. Before kinetic parameters of a model can be est imated, a proper choice of the state variables and the structure of th e model has to be made. This contribution shows that, by an appropriat e time scaling of the measurements, very similar growth patterns with respect to macromolecular synthesis and degradation can be found in di fferent streptomyces strains. As these growth patterns form the basis for an already proposed highly structured mathematical model for S. te ndae, it is shown that the very same model structure with minor modifi cations can be used for other strains, too. Therefore, the modelling p rocess is speeded up significantly. Several examples are given. (C) 19 97 Elsevier Science B.V.