Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Formation Of Escherichia Coli O157: H7 Persister Cells In The Lettuce Phyllosphere And Application Of Differential Equation Models To Predict Their Prevalence On Lettuce Plants In The Field, Daniel S. Munther, Michelle Q. Carter, Claude V. Aldric, Renata Ivanek, Maria T. Brandl

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

American Society for Microbiology. Escherichia coli O157:H7 (EcO157) infections have been recurrently associated with produce. The physiological state of EcO157 cells surviving the many stresses encountered on plants is poorly understood. EcO157 populations on plants in the field generally follow a biphasic decay in which small subpopulations survive over longer periods of time. We hypothesized that these subpopulations include persister cells, known as cells in a transient dormant state that arise through phenotypic variation in a clonal population. Using three experimental regimes (with growing, stationary at carrying capacity, and decaying populations), we measured the persister cell fractions in culturable EcO157 …