Table 1.

Useful numbers for modelling bacterial growth and evolution. All data refers to the bacterium E. coli. If no reference is given, the values come from in-house experiments for the MG1655 strain of E. coli. We also refer the reader to bionumbers [36] - an excellent source of biology-related numbers.

Parameter	Value
size	typical width 1μm, typical length 2-5μm
exponential growth rate	maximum: ~2h–1, sub-optimal conditions: 0.3–1.5 h–1
minimum doubling time	~ 20 min
elongation rate	0.1 – 0.2μm/min (on rich medium)
maximum density	~ 1–5 ×109 cells per ml (LB medium, stationary phase)
mutation rate	~ 2 × 10–10 per bp per replication [30]
glucose molecules consumed to make 1 cell	~ 1.8 × 1010 [26,31]
weight	280 fg per cell [32]
protein molecules per cell	2.35 × 106 (1850 distinct protein molecules) [32]
mRNA molecules per cell	1380 [32]
genome size	4.5 × 106 bp
genome copy number	1 (slow growth) to 8 (fast growth) [33]
abundance of RNA polymerase	~ 1% of total protein mass [34]
abundance of ribosomes (growth rate dependent)	~20-40% of total mass [32]; ~ 7000-70,000 per cell
DNA replication rate	580 - 1,190 bp/s [34]
mRNA elongation rate (transcription)	39-56 nucleotides/s [34]
peptide elongation rate (translation)	13-22 amino acids/s [34]
intracellular concentration of ATP (growth in glucose-fed chemostat)	9.6mM [35]
intracellular concentration of a typical metabolite	0.1-100mM [35]
total intracellular metabolite concentration	~300mM [35]
plasmid size	~2-500kbp
plasmid copy number	~1-200 per cell
minimal inhibitory concentration,
- ampicillin (inhibits cell wall synthesis)	~ 8μg/ml (LB medium)
- rifampicin (RNA synthesis inhibitor)	~ 3μg/ml (LB medium)
- ciprofloxacin (DNA gyrase inhibitor)	~ 20ng/ml (LB medium)