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- Current: Oct 9, 2023
CFU, colony forming unit
The colony forming unit (CFU, cfu) is an estimate of the number of microbial cells that are capable of forming a colony.
In an ideal experiment, CFU is same as the number of colonies on the plate. However, "number of colonies" is not a good measure because satellite colonies and overlapping colonies appear on the plate when incubation time is not adequate. Thus, CFU is preferentially used in biology experiments.
