High School

A test tube is inoculated with 100 cells of a bacterial strain that has a generation time of 30 minutes. The carrying capacity of the test tube for this strain is 6 billion cells. What will the bacterial population be after 90 minutes of culturing?

A. ~200
B. ~300
C. ~800
D. ~10,000

Answer :

Starting with 100 cells, after 30 minutes, there will be 200 cells. After 60 minutes, there will be 400 cells. After 90 minutes, there will be approximately 800 cells, as the population doubles every 30 minutes.

The bacteria will have undergone 3 generations after 90 minutes (since generation time is 30 minutes), and the initial population was 100 cells. Each generation is a doubling, so after 3 generations, there will be 2^3 = 8 times the initial population.

Thus, the population after 90 minutes will be:

100 cells x 8 = 800 cells

Since the carrying capacity of the test tube is 6 billion cells, which is much larger than 800 cells, we can assume that it has not been reached yet. Therefore, the answer is: ~800

Learn more about generations here:

https://brainly.com/question/10736907

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