Mathematical models of microbial growth and competition in the chemostat regulated by cell-bound extracellular enzymes (Q1202557)

From authors' abstract: A mathematical model of growth and competitive interactions of microorganisms in the chemostat is analyzed. The growth- limiting nutrient is not in a form that can be directly assimilated by the microorganisms, and must first be transformed into an intermediate product by cell-bound extra-cellular enzymes. General monotone functions, including Michaelis-Menten and sigmoidal response functions, are used to describe nutrient conversion and growth due to consumption of the intermediate product. It is shown that the initial concentration of the species is an important determining factor for survival or washout. When there are two species whose growth is limited by the same nutrient, three different modes of competition are described. Competitive coexistence steady states are shown to be possible in two of them, but they are always unstable.