4.4. Determination of Adsorption Rate

Measurement of individual phage adsorption rates were previously described [30,31,52,56]. Briefly, ~5 × 10⁶ cells/mL of exponentially-grown naïve MG1655 were co-incubated with ~5 × 10³ PFU/mL of the respective phage. Aliqouts were removed at specific time intervals up to 10 min and subjected to filter sterilization utilizing a 0.2 micron syringe filter (Corning Life Sciences, Corning, NY, USA). Samples were subjected to previously described plaque assays to obtain PFU/mL counts. The adsorption rates were estimated by fitting the data to the previously described [30] Equation: ln(P_t/P₀) = (−rN₀/μ)(e^µt − 1), where P_t and P₀ are phage concentrations at times x and 0, respectively; r the adsorption rate to be estimated; N₀ the bacteria concentration at time 0; and μ the bacterial growth rate.