[Math] Modeling bacterial growth with differential equations

ordinary differential equationssystems biology

I hope this is the right place for this question. I am working on building a growth model for bacteria for a risk assessment, and would like to move the growth model past static temperature conditions. The primary growth model, using the modified Gompertz equation, is:

$$\log_{10} R = A_g \cdot \exp(-\exp\{\mu\cdot \exp(1)\cdot(l-t)/A_g +1\}), $$

where $R$ is the relative population. There are secondary models for the three parameters $A_g$, $\mu$ and $l$ (i.e., the max number of bacteria at the stationary phase; the growth rate; and the lag phase, respectively). For example, for mu the equation is:

$$\sqrt{\mu}=0.0421\cdot(T-12.0570),$$ where $T$ is temperature.

All of the secondary models are dependent upon temperature, since bacteria obviously favor warmer conditions and grow faster, up to a certain point.

My trouble is that one paper specifying a different growth model (logistic) was able to model bacterial growth under ANY temperature regime you can think of by deriving a differential equation for their primary model. I have little experience in differential equations and sadly, I am actually just not even sure which part of my model would need to be integrated. Since I am interested in how the changing parameters (due to changing temperature) lead to growth in the end, I would think I would need to integrate with respect to $T$? But I am unsure if this means solving the differential equations of the second-order parameters (because they are the only ones that directly have $T$ in them) or if that means doing something else to the primary equation?

For reference, the paper I am using most often is:

Corradini, M. G., Amézquita, A., Normand, M. D., & Peleg, M. (2006). Modeling and predicting non-isothermal microbial growth using general purpose software. International journal of food microbiology, 106(2), 223-228.

(Open source PDF available through Google Scholar)

Best Answer

I have this modified Gompertz equation, how do I convert it back to a differential equation?

For some suitable constants $(a,b,c)$ determined by $(A_g,\mu,l)$, one has $$\ln\ln R=a-\exp(b-ct)$$ hence $$\frac{R'}{R\ln R}=c\exp(b-ct)=c(a-\ln\ln R)$$ that is, $$R'=cR\ln R(a-\ln\ln R)$$

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