Date/Time*/Room: Thursday (3/1/2001) at 4:00 pm in 304 Pickard Hall
Speaker:
Hal L. Smith,
Department of Mathematics,
Arizona State University
``A Mathematical Model of
Microbial Growth and Competition in a Plug Flow Reactor: A Model of the Gut''
Abstract:
A mathematical model of microbial growth and competition for
limiting nutrient and for wall attachment sites in a plug flow
reactor will be described. It leads to a system of
advection-diffusion equations coupled to a system of odes. We
examine the hyperbolic system obtained in the case where advection
dominates diffusion. Steady state solutions are studied
analytically and numerically. Coexistence of bacterial strains can
occur in which the different strains occupy separate parts of the
reactor (we call this segregation). The model was devised by
microbiologist
R. Freter (in a chemostat setting) to understand the observed
stability of the natural microflora of the gut to invasion by
exotic strains. The connection of our work to this problem will be
described.
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