Question set A; bacterial growth You are a healthy doctor who is colonized with

Question

Question set A; bacterial growth
You are a healthy doctor who is colonized with MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and doesn’t realize it. You get some of these bacteria on your hand when you blow your nose. You then comfort an elderly patient by taking her hand, not realizing that she has a small cut on her hand and is also immunocompromised. A single MRSA gets deep inside the cut. If the generation time of the MRSA under the growth conditions in the wound is 3 hours,

a)how many generations will the bacteria have gone through 3 days later and


b) how many bacteria will be present at this 3 day time point (assuming the
death rate of the bacteria is negligible)? (enter full number in field, not scientific notation)

Explanation / Answer

A single MRSA gets inside her cut. The generation time is 3 hours. So after 3 hours the single bacterium divides to give 2 bacteria. a) So after 3 days or 72 hours, the bacteria undergo 24 generations b) The number of bacteria present after 3 days will be: 2^24 = 16777216 bacteria.

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