[Kinetics of the processes of Streptococcus pneumoniae batch cultivation in relation to the physiological state of the inoculum].
The present investigation, carried out with the use of S. pneumoniae as a model, has shown that the kinetics of cultivation processes depend on the preparation of the seed culture. The use of the seed culture, taken at the end of the exponential phase of growth, leads to high initial and maximum specific growth rates and a shorter lag phase, high productivity of the process and the economic coefficient of the yield of the biomass. If pH and pO2 are maintained at a set level, the most operative parameter of the process is the redox potential. A new informative characteristic of the cultivation process (T) is proposed. This characteristic permits the comparison of growth processes and indicates the time in which the fluctuations of Gibbs's free energy per 1000 million cells decrease to a definite level.