DARK MICROBIAL MATTER

About:

• Microbial dark matter comprises the vast majority of microbial organisms that biologists are unable to culture in lab due to lack of knowledge or ability to supply the required growth conditions.
  
  
• It is possible that these microbes can’t grow on their own in culture because they die if they are removed from their intricate relationships with each other or their particular environment.
  
  

Recent study:

• Researchers from the University of Tennessee in the U.S. have published a study in the journal mSystems, the first to estimate the population of dark microbial matter.
  
  
• to it, a quarter of the microbes on earth could come from the roughly 30 phyla of microbes that have never been cultured.
  
  
• The study can be a valuable tool in fields such as medicine, where scientists have described cases of culture-resistant pathogens.