Dynamics of microbial growth and cell composition in batch culture

What does a batch growth curve look like? The answer to this question seems straight forward and any microbiology text book will provide you with virtually the same standard growth curve as the one depicted in Fig. 1. It is obvious that exponential growth in a closed system cannot go on ad infinitum: sooner or later one of the essential nutrients will be exhausted and it is generally thought (and taught) that, no matter what the growth-limiting nutrient is, growth stops abruptly after its depletion. But is the answer really as clear-cut as has been taught for some seven decades since Buchanan's first review 1 on this subject? Here this question for the simple case of a heterotrophic, aerobic microbe will be addressed and some of the effects caused by depletion of different nutrients on the dynamics of growth and on cell composition will be reviewed. Also. some of the lesser-known phenomena which can occur in the exponential phase of batch growth will be looked at in more detail.