Culturing Previously Uncultured Gut Microbes

The use of metagenomics has led to the recognition that the human microbiome likely includes numerous microorganisms that have never been grown in culture. To fully understand the role of these microbes in human health and to potentially make use of them therapeutically, growing them in pure culture is essential. An international group of investigators now reports increased success in culturing gut microbes through “culturomics,” a standardized high-throughput use of culture conditions to grow bacterial colonies and, subsequently, identify organisms with matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization-time of flight or 16S rRNA amplification and sequencing.

Using 18 optimized culture conditions, the researchers initially analyzed 37 stool sample…