Fig. 7

Calculated experimental rates and comparison to the simulation. A illustrates the average volumetric productivity and B the pDNA production fluxes of control and \({\text {SO}_4^{2-}}\) limited process (black CTRL and red SLIM, respectively). C shows the ratio of \(q_{\text {pDNA}}^\text {SLIM}\) and \(q_{\text {pDNA}}^\text {CTRL}\) (blue). Experimental replicates are shown as markers, dotted lines are calculated from simulations. To adjust the simulations to the rates obtained in the experiments, a linearly decreasing \(q_{\text {pDNA}}^\text {CTRL}\) was fitted to experimental control data (black dotted line, B). Moreover, we fitted a parallel \(q_{\text {pDNA}}^\text {SLIM}\) (red dotted line, B) to conform to the experimental flux ratio (panel C). The vertical gray dashed line represents the estimated time of switching from biomass growth to pDNA production (projected at 23 h)