Lag phase represents the earliest and most poorly understood stage of the bacterial growth cycle. We developed a reproducible experimental system and conducted functional genomic and physiological analyses of a 2-h lag phase in Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. Adaptation began within 4 min of inoculation into fresh LB medium with the transient expression of genes involved in phosphate uptake. The main lag-phase transcriptional program initiated at 20 min with the upregulation of 945 genes encoding processes such as transcription, translation, iron-sulfur protein assembly, nucleotide metabolism, LPS biosynthesis, and aerobic respiration. ChIP-chip revealed that RNA polymerase was not "poised" upstream of the bacterial genes that are rapidly induced at the beginning of lag phase, suggesting a mechanism that involves de novo partitioning of RNA polymerase to transcribe 522 bacterial genes within 4 min of leaving stationary phase. We used inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to discover that iron, calcium, and manganese are accumulated by S. Typhimurium during lag phase, while levels of cobalt, nickel, and sodium showed distinct growth-phase-specific patterns. The high concentration of iron during lag phase was associated with transient sensitivity to oxidative stress. The study of lag phase promises to identify the physiological and regulatory processes responsible for adaptation to new environments.

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A number of outbreaks of food poisoning attributed to Bacillus cereus have been reported recently and all have been associated with cooked rice usually from Chinese restaurants and ;take-away' shops.Tests were made to assess the heat resistance of B. cereus spores in aqueous suspension, the growth of the organism in boiled rice stored at temperatures in the range 4-55 degrees C., and the effect of cooking and storage on the growth of the organism in boiled and fried rice. The spores of B. cereus survived cooking and were capable of germination and outgrowth. The optimum temperature for growth in boiled rice was between 30 degrees and 37 degrees C. and growth also occurred during storage at 15 degrees and 43 degrees C.To prevent further outbreaks it is suggested that rice should be boiled in smaller quantities on several occasions during the day, thereby reducing the storage time before frying. After boiling the rice should either be kept hot (> 63 degrees C.) or cooled quickly and transferred to a refrigerator within 2 hr. of cooking. Boiled or fried rice must not be stored under warm conditions especially in the range 15-50 degrees C.

Confirmation of C perfringens food poisoning depends on the isolation of large numbers (> 106/g) of the organism from faecal specimens and the subsequent demonstration of a common serological type in these and in the incriminated food. The ability of these isolates to produce enterotoxin in vitro may be of importance, but the problems associated with obtaining good sporulation and subsequent enterotoxin production in vitro are well known and make this approach unsuitable.5 An alternative approach is to show the presence of enterotoxin in faeces, and this may be particularly valuable when serological confirmation is not possible.

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