Use of Ichip for High-Throughput In Situ Cultivation of “Uncultivable” Microbial Species

One of the oldest unresolved microbiological phenomena is why only a small fraction of the diverse microbiological population grows on artificial media. The "uncultivable" microbial majority arguably represents our planet's largest unexplored pool of biological and chemical novelty. Previously we showed that species from this pool could be grown inside diffusion chambers incubated in situ, likely because diffusion provides microorganisms with their naturally occurring growth factors. Here we utilize this approach and develop a novel high-throughput platform for parallel cultivation and isolation of previously uncultivated microbial species from a variety of environments. We have designed and tested an…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: 0816840, 0221267, 0348341
• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy

  Awards: FG02-07ER64507, DE-FG02-, FG02-04ER63782, DE-FG02