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Bacteria and archaea make up most of the living world, but the vast majority of species, including some that are intimately associated with humans, have never been isolated or cultured.
Sequencing of DNA from natural microbe populations has allowed the identification of previously unknown taxa and in some cases provided detailed genomic information about the organisms. But having sequence data is “like having the parts list” for a machine, says microbiologist Karsten Zengler of the University of California, San Diego. This alone “does not tell you what this machine will do.”
For a better understanding of a microbe’s physiology and functions, researchers need to study living specimens, or at least whole cells. To that end, microbial geneticist Mircea Podar of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and colleagues are examining the sequence data of uncultured microbes to design tools with which to capture the bugs.
Focusing on bacteria ...
