INTRODUCTION

Microorganisms are basically tiny life forms and often consisting of a single cell.
Microorganisms are very tiny living thing that cannot be seen with rough eyes. Its only can be
discovered by using certain equipment called microscope, which designed for high
magnifications. The microorganisms can be in the form of algae, bacteria, moulds, protozoa,
viruses and yeast.

Microorganisms are available everywhere in our surrounding like air we breathe, soil,
water, various parts of our bodies, the food that we take. The reproduction of microorganisms
involves duplication of nucleus through cell division of the cell. This process is called as mitosis
process. Another way of reproduction of microorganisms is that when a haploid nuclei unit to
form a diploid cell, changing further to bring about sexually produced offspring. The
microorganisms can be affected by several factors. For example, surrounding temperature,
pH of the surface, nutritional content, moisture content and the existence of oxygen.

Bacterial population growth studies require inoculation of viable cells into a sterile broth
medium and incubation of the culture under optimum temperature, pH, and gaseous
conditions. Under these conditions, the cells will reproduce rapidly and the dynamics of the
microbial growth can be charted by means of a population growth curve, which is constructed
by plotting the increase in cell numbers versus time of incubation and can be used to delineate
stages of the growth cycle. It also facilitates measurement of cell numbers and the rate of
growth of a particular organism under standardized conditions as expressed by its generation
time, the time required for a microbial population to double.

Fermentation is a metabolic process that consumes sugar without the presence of

oxygen. The products are organic acids, gases, or alcohol. It occurs in yeast and bacteria, and
also in oxygen-starved muscle cells, as in the case of lactic acid fermentation. In
microorganisms, fermentation is the primary means of producing ATP by the degradation of
organic nutrients anaerobically. There are many ways to carried out fermentation process such
as batch, continuous and fed-batch processes. In this experiment, we decided to use the
shake flask fermentation. The shake flask fermentation is an example of batch fermentation.
In shake flask which is the Erlenmeyer flask is being used to place and growing the
microorganisms. It is a small-scale equipment which equivalent to stirred tank bioreactor and
it is also the cheapest and easiest way to culture microorganism aerobically, in small volumes
of nutrient broth.
 The media used in this experiment is prepared based on the type of microorganisms.
The microorganism used in this is Escherichia coli. There are many kinds of media for E coli
for instance Luria Bertani broth (Lennox) or Terrific Broth. However, Terrific Broth which is a
phosphate buffer media is used in this experiment since it is more suitable to be used in
laboratory scale. Terrific Broth contains enzymatic digestion product of casein, commonly
known as peptone. Peptone is rich in amino acids and peptides. Its amino acid and peptide
compositions reflect those of casein. In addition to amino acids and peptides, yeast extract
also contains nucleic acids, lipids and other nutrients which are needed for bacterial growth.
The peptone content in Terrific Broth Media is 20% larger than in Lennox Media. The yeast
extracted in Terrific Broth media also about four times larger than in Lennox media.

http://www.biologydiscussion.com/microorganisms/growth-of-microorganisms-with-diagram

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/study-guides/biology/microbiology/microbial-cultivation-and-
growth/growth-requirements-for-microorganisms