Growth of Bacillus subtilis NRS-762 (ATCC 8473) in different growth medium under different temperatures

Bacillus subtilis is an environmental microorganism endowed with an array of cell differentiation pathways such as competence, biofilm formation, cannibalism and sporulation. Also a commensal in the human gastrointestinal tract, B. subtilis is a bacterium of continuing research interest. This dataset reports data from experiments designed to explore the effect of different growth temperatures and growth media on the growth of B. subtilis NRS-762 (ATCC 8473) in shake flasks. Growth temperatures used were 25, 30, and 37 ^oC, and growth media investigated were LB Lennox, Tryptic Soy Broth, and M9 medium supplemented with yeast extract. Key finding from the experiments pertain to the existence of drastic decline in optical density of B. subtilis NRS-762 upon entry into stationary phase in LB Lennox and Tryptic Soy Broth irrespective of growth temperatures. Such drastic decline in optical density might be due to differentiation of B. subtilis into cannibalistic mode in stationary phase that, in turn, induced cell lysis. This finding meant that B. subtilis NRS-762 is not suitable as model organism in microbial survivability studies given the inability to disentangle coupled cell death arising from environmental stressor and intrinsic cell death. Overall, the dataset should find use in understanding the fundamental growth behaviour of B. subtilis NRS-762 in a variety of growth media under different temperatures.