This summer I (Goodwin) worked on developing a pipeline for the analysis of growth curves collected in the lab. Growth curves, which are usually measured as optical density of bacteria over time, provide important insights into the growth of bacteria under different environmental perturbations. A significant challenge to their application in larger systems analysis is the difficulty of quantifying their properties in simple numbers. During my project I worked on building a database and analysis techniques to centralize and simplify analysis of growth curves for all biologists within the lab. Although eventually the pipeline will be available via the web, this summer I focused on making an R-based package for implementation and further development of growth parameter estimating functions. Below is an example of a plot of the analysis executed by the package.

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Institute for Systems Biology, 1441 North 34th Street, Seattle, WA 98103-8904