Elucidation of the growth phenotypes of 82 strains from the

Introduction: Microbial growth phenotype is commonly summarised by a small set of parameters: specific growth rate, lag phase duration, maximum cell density, and growth curve profile; yet even within a single genus these characteristics can vary substantially across species, with direct consequences for how growth performance is interpreted and compared. This challenge is particularly pertinent for the largely uncharacterised Methods: In this work, the growth phenotypes of 82 Results: Maximum specific growth rates ranged from 0.05 ± 0.03 to 1.14 ± 0.34 h Discussion: This analyst-dependent variation has broad implications beyond strain characterisation: analyst interpretation directly affects reported growth rates, which serve as key inputs and constraints in metabolic modelling and upstream bioprocess design. The reliability of both primary literature and secondary computational analyses built upon these data is therefore directly affected by analyst-specific decisions, a problem further compounded for poorly characterised organisms, whose growth parameters are often borrowed from related species in the absence of species-specific data, introducing a largely unacknowledged source of uncertainty. This foundational phenotypic dataset highlights an urgent need for standardised, generalisable frameworks for growth parameter determination, particularly for non-model organisms.