Inferring fungal growth rates from optical density data
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Published version
Author(s)
Hameed, Tara
Motsi, Natasha
Bignell, Elaine
Tanaka, Reiko
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Quantifying fungal growth underpins our ability to effectively treat severe fungal infections. Current methods quantify fungal growth rates from time-course morphology-specific data, such as hyphal length data. However, automated large-scale collection of such data lies beyond the scope of most clinical microbiology laboratories. In this paper, we propose a mathematical model of fungal growth to estimate morphology-specific growth rates from easy-to-collect, but indirect, optical density (OD600) data of Aspergillus fumigatus growth (filamentous fungus). Our method accounts for OD600 being an indirect measure by explicitly including the relationship between the indirect OD600 measurements and the calibrating true fungal growth in the model. Therefore, the method does not require de novo generation of calibration data. Our model outperformed reference models at fitting to and predicting OD600 growth curves and overcame observed discrepancies between morphology-specific rates inferred from OD600 versus directly measured data in reference models that did not include calibration.
Date Issued
2024-05
Date Acceptance
2024-04-24
Citation
PLoS Computational Biology, 2024, 20
ISSN
1553-734X
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Journal / Book Title
PLoS Computational Biology
Volume
20
Copyright Statement
© 2024 Hameed et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
License URL
Identifier
https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1012105
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
e1012105
Date Publish Online
2024-05-16