Use of a real-time thermocycler for charting bacterial growth

The generation of growth curves is a common and established method for determining the properties of bacterial strains. Such properties can be growth rates in enrichment broths or resistance to antibiotics. Enrichment methods are the gold standard for enumerating bacteria and determining growth properties. Newer methods can use agents that are metabolized during bacterial growth, which leads to a shift in fluorescence. This principle is used, for example, to measure viable bacterial cells. In this work, a real-time thermal cycler was used to cultivate bacteria and measure the change in fluorescence during bacterial growth to determine the generation time of different bacterial strains. The ability of the real-time diagram enables a significant simplification and increase in cost efficiency in the generation of bacterial growth curves. It was also possible to monitor the susceptibility of bacteria to antibiotic resistance, which opened another important application of this technique.