Cultivating Efficiency: High-Throughput Growth Analysis of Anaerobic Bacteria in Compact Microplate Readers

This research focuses on improving high-throughput and real-time monitoring of anaerobic bacterial growth using compact microplate readers. Traditional methods are labor-intensive and not suited for anaerobic conditions. This study presents a workflow using Cerillo microplate readers paired with the Growthcurver R package for kinetic growth analysis. The Cerillo Stratus was benchmarked against a BioTek Synergy HTX reader, showing comparable performance under aerobic conditions. Further experiments demonstrated the Stratus’s efficacy in anaerobic environments, particularly in measuring the effects of sodium arsenite on E. coli and Clostridium bolteae.