On monitoring the bacterial component as an indicator of the state of small man-made ecosystems.

High reproduction rates make the bacterial component of ecosystems a good indicator of the state of the system on the whole. This determines the necessity to develop rapid monitoring of the functional state of the bacterial component of small ecosystems. Information about substrate concentration in the population is indicative of the state of the bacterial culture. Conventional methods of monitoring the concentration of integral substrate in the system take time much longer than the changes in the ecosystem. The paper presents theoretical foundations for the logical sequence "catalase activity--intracellular substrate concentration--estimate of substrate consumed by bacteria" for experimental verification and as a consequence of development of the integral method of monitoring the bacterial population on the basis of determining bacterial catalase activity. Grant numbers: 04-96017, N25.