TY - JOUR T1 - Predicting microbial relative growth in a mixed culture from growth curve data JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/022640 SP - 022640 AU - Yoav Ram AU - Eynat Dellus-Gur AU - Maayan Bibi AU - Uri Obolski AU - Judith Berman AU - Lilach Hadany Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/11/24/022640.abstract N2 - Estimates of microbial fitness from growth curves are inaccurate. Rather, competition experiments are necessary for accurate estimation. But competition experiments require unique markers and are difficult to perform with isolates derived from a common ancestor or non-model organisms. Here we describe a new approach for predicting relative growth of microbes in a mixed culture utilizing mono- and mixed culture growth curve data. We validated this approach using growth curve and competition experiments with E. coli. Our approach provides an effective way to predict growth in a mixed culture and infer relative fitness. Furthermore, by integrating several growth phases, it provides an ecological interpretation for microbial fitness. ER -