INFLUENCE OF MICRO-ENVIRONMENT ON YEAST POPULATION DYNAMICS

Abundance or scarcity of external nutrients is a metabolic trigger, especially for highly proliferative cells such as bacteria, yeasts, parasites or tumors. In presence of oxygen cells usually adopt efficient metabolism in order to maximize energy production yield in poor diet. If nutrient resource increases, a metabolic shift from efficient metabolism (respiration) to inefficient metabolism (fermentation) is reflecting a minimal cost principle of living systems to optimize fitness. This is known as the Crabtree/Warburg effect. Identifying a model that describes the population dynamics of cells and the input growth condition are the goals of this study. Proof of principle has been constructed using a battery of growth experiments on Crabtree-positive yeasts–Saccharomyces under various conditions of glucose in aerobic and micro-aerobic conditions. General cell growth model estimating metabolic shift has been constructed based on an Auto Regressive approach.