Author(s)

Davide Valenti, Alessandro Giuffrida, Graziella, Ziino, Filippo Giarratana, Bernardo Spagnolo, Antonio Panebianco

Department of Veterinary Science, Università di Messina, Polo Universitario dell’Annunziata, Facoltà di Medicina Veterinaria, Messina, Italy.
Dipartimento di Fisica e Chimica, Group of Interdisciplinary Physics, Università di Palermo and CNISM, Unità di Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Palermo, Italy.

In this paper we review some results obtained within the context of the predictive microbiology, which is a specific field of the population dynamics. In particular we discuss three models, which exploit tools of statistical mechanics, for bacterial dynamics in food of animal origin. In the first model, the random fluctuating behaviour, experimentally measured, of the temperature is considered. In the second model stochastic differential equations are introduced to take into account the influence of physical and chemical variables, such as temperature, pH and activity water, subject to deterministic and random variations. The third model, which is an extended version of the second one, neglects the environmental fluctuations, and concentrates on the role of the interspecific bacterial interactions. The comparison between expected results and observed data indicates that the presence of noise sources and interspecific bacterial interactions improves the predictive features of the models analyzed.

Statistical Mechanics; Population Dynamics; Noise-Induced Effects; Stochastic Modeling; Noise in Biological Systems

D. Valenti, A. Giuffrida, G. Ziino, F. Giarratana, B. Spagnolo and A. Panebianco, "Modelling Bacterial Dynamics in Food Products: Role of Environmental Noise and Interspecific Competition," Journal of Modern Physics, Vol. 4 No. 8, 2013, pp. 1059-1065. doi: 10.4236/jmp.2013.48142.