“One of the biggest problems in the exploration of microbial dark matter is that so far, it is very complicated to determine when uncultured microbes are metabolically active and what their ecological function in a system is.”
In a study published online June 28, 2016 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), a DOE Office of Science User Facility, utilized a recently refined technique to identify both individual active cells, and single clusters of active bacteria and archaea within microbial communities. Understanding the true scope of the planet’s microbial diversity is of interest to the DOE in order to learn how they can be harnessed for a wide range of energy and environmental challenges. Read more on the DOE JGI website.
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