Secrets from the deep

Sydney Morning Herald November 21,2013

We expect the efficiency of bacterial growth to vary with the timing of nutrient delivery. Such findings will offer insight into bacterial strategies of growth optimization and could improve engineered approaches for controlling the production of bacterial biomass. Overall, this microfluidic approach opens a new window into the role of environmental fluctuations in microbial ecology, permitting the first direct and quantifiable studies of bacterial physiology under a broad range of fluctuating environmental conditions.