Dashing Growth Curves: a web application for rapid and interactive analysis of microbial growth curves

Abstract

Abstract Background Recording and analyzing microbial growth is a routine task in the life sciences. Microplate readers that record dozens to hundreds of growth curves simultaneously are increasingly used for this task raising the demand for their rapid and reliable analysis. Results Here, we present Dashing Growth Curves, an interactive web application ( http://dashing-growth-curves.ethz.ch/ ) that enables researchers to quickly visualize and analyze growth curves without the requirement for coding knowledge and independent of operating system. Growth curves can be fitted with parametric and non-parametric models or manually. The application extracts maximum growth rates as well as other features such as lag time, length of exponential growth phase and maximum population size among others. Furthermore, Dashing Growth Curves automatically groups replicate samples and generates downloadable summary plots for of all growth parameters. Conclusions Dashing Growth Curves is an open-source web application that reduces the time required to analyze microbial growth curves from hours to minutes.

Keywords

• Automation
• Growth curve
• Gompertz
• Logistic
• Web application
• Open source