A two-compartment kinetic cell model of bacterial population dynamics is developed which is capable of describing the phenomena of (sub)lethal injury, resuscitation, induced lag and exponential growth. The theory is used to model data on the injury and resuscitation of Salmonella typhimurium . A more general three-compartment kinetic model is developed to interpret lag behaviour in total biomass. The importance of measuring biomass as well as cell numbers is emphasized.
