Skip to main content
. 2012 Oct 9;8:617. doi: 10.1038/msb.2012.49

Figure 6.

Figure 6

Modeling the impact of inoculum effect (IE) on periodic antibiotic treatment. (A) A simplified model that describes population dynamics in periodic pulses of an antibiotic. Cases (i) and (ii) cause the same dynamics as indicated by the top panel. Case (iii) causes the dynamics as indicated by the bottom panel. See Supplementary Figure S6A for functions of τlag. (B) IE is predicted to cause band-pass response of bacterial growth to periodic treatment (bottom panel). Without IE, bacterial density increased with increasing pulse periods (top panel). μ1=μ2=0.07, N0=10−6, Nc=10−5, and Nmax=10−3. Each line corresponds to a specific pulse period (T) as indicated next to the line. Note that in the bottom panel (with IE), time series of both T=500 and T=10 min are identical. (C) With IE, the effective growth duration (T/2−τlag) in each cycle first increases and then decreases with T, leading to band-pass bacterial response. Without IE, the effective growth duration increases monotonically with T. See Supplementary Figure S6 for additional data.