4.3.3 Enumeration of Spore PopulationsThe concentration of spores in the final spore crop suspension should bedetermined so that selected aliquots can be used to form test suspensionsthat will have the required spore populations. The enumeration should alsobe extended to the test suspensions in order to verify populations prior totheir exposure to thermal treatment. Microbial enumeration is dependentupon the methods employed. Many species require specific culture media,the composition ofwhich must be carefully formulated and controlled, withparticular attention to pH, redox potential, and the like as well as theincubation conditions, aerobic/anaerobic, temperature, and time.There are two basic methods, one in which the number of colonies thatappear on or within the surface of a solid culture medium is counted andexpressed as colony forming units (cfu); the other of which is the mostprobable number (MPN), which is derived from the presence or absence ofgrowth in specified dilutions of the inoculum in a culture medium. Byconvention, the number of microorganisms in a population is equal to thenumber of cfus counted times the dilution factor, or to a most probablenumber derived from specific probability tables for this purpose and thedilution factor. In both cases the medium and incubation conditions usedare generally chosen to obtain the maximum number ofmicroorganisms andto which specific reference is made.The spores must be permitted to germinate to form vegetative cells,which are then grown on or in a suitable medium. In the germination thespore becomes hydrated with reduced thermal resistance. With the initiationof nucleic acid and protein synthesis, the vegetative cell emerges from thespore casing followed by cellular expansion up to the point of the firstcellular division. In some instances, germination occurs spontaneously at theend of sporulation, during the refining operations, and/or during storage. Asgerminating spores have lost their heat resistance, their presenceproportionately reduces the spore population that is usable for heatresistance tests. Initiation of germination requires the presence of specificlow molecular weight compounds (e.g ., glucose, certain amino acids, andsome nucleotides) in the culture medium whose composition tends to bespecies and strain specific. The time required for the completion of thegermination varies from species to species, strain to strain, and even withina spore crop, and it may require hours to many weeks to overcome what iscalled spore dormancy. Both the speed of germination and the proportionof the spores to germinate can frequently be increased by heat shocking (i.e.,moderate preheating of the spores). This phenomenon, called heatactivation, is not always taken into consideration in the experimentalprotocols for studying the destructive effects of thermal treatments. Itso mission can affect the enumeration of the surviving spores as well as th einterpretation of the results. This will be discussed in Section 4.4.1.
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