User:Larryisgood/One-Step Growth Experiment

In microbiology, the one-step growth experiment is a technique for studying the attachment and replication behavior of bacteriophages. The experiment proceeds first with the mixing of a suspension of bacteriophages with a suspension of bacteria which are susceptible to the bacteriophage. After a short time, the mixture is significantly diluted in order to decrease the concentration of both bacteria and phages, thus making chance encounters between them less probable. If the dilution is done promptly enough (i.e. a short interval relative to the eclipse period of phage replication), this dilution has the effect of halting further binding between phages and host bacterial cells. The now-diluted solution is presumed only to contain bacteriophages bound to bacterial cells, with separate populations of unbound phages and bacteria which will, to a first approximation, not interact due to their low concentration. Samples can then be taken from this dilute mixture at regular time intervals and the infectious titer can be established at each time point. This allows the replication kinetics to be established such as eclipse period duration, burst size etc.

In summary, the one-step growth experiment brings together bacteria and phages at high enough concentration to allow binding, followed by dilution in order to stop further binding, followed by regular sampling to measure infective virus concentration.