One of the major parameters that characterizes the kinetics of microbial processes is the maximum specific growth rate. The maximum specific growth rate for a single microorganism (⁠|${\mu _{max}}$|⁠) is fairly constant. However, a certain microbial process is typically catalyzed by a group of microorganisms (guild) that have various |${\mu _{max}}$| values. In many occasions, it is not feasible to breakdown a guild into its constituent microorganisms. Therefore, it is a common practice to assume a constant maximum specific growth rate for the guild (⁠|$\acute{\mu}_{max}$|⁠) and determine its value by fitting experimental data. This assumption is valid for natural environments, where microbial guilds are stabilized and dominated by microorganisms that grow optimally in those environments’ conditions. However, a change in an environment's conditions will trigger a community shift by favoring some of the microorganisms. This shift leads to a variable |${\acute{\mu}_{max}}$| as long as substrate availability is significantly higher than substrate affinity constant. In this work, it is illustrated that the assumption of constant |${\acute{\mu}_{max}}$| may underestimate or overestimate microbial growth. To circumvent this, a novel relationship that characterizes changes in |${\acute{\mu}_{max}}$| under abundant nutrient availability is proposed. The proposed relationship is evaluated for various random microbial guilds in batch experiments.

中文翻译：

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微生物群最大比增长率的新关系

表征微生物过程动力学的主要参数之一是最大比生长速率。单个微生物的最大比增长率（⁠|${\mu _{max}}$|⁠）相当恒定。然而，某种微生物过程通常是由一组具有各种|${\mu _{max}}$|的微生物（公会）催化的。值。在许多情况下，将一个公会分解为其组成微生物是不可行的。因此，通常的做法是假设公会的最大特定增长率（⁠|$\acute{\m​​u}_{max}$|⁠) 并通过拟合实验数据确定其值。该假设适用于自然环境，在自然环境中，微生物群落由在这些环境条件下最佳生长的微生物稳定和支配。然而，环境条件的变化将通过偏爱某些微生物来触发群落转变。这种转变导致了一个变量|${\acute{\m​​u}_{max}}$| 只要底物可用性显着高于底物亲和常数。在这项工作中，说明了常数|${\acute{\m​​u}_{max}}$|的假设 可能低估或高估微生物的生长。为了规避这一点，一种新的关系表征了|${\acute{\m​​u}_{max}}$| 的变化。建议在营养丰富的情况下。在批量实验中针对各种随机微生物行会评估所提出的关系。