Novel microbial strain discovery

Even though microbial ecosystems have an enormous diversity, and microbial communities have great application potential, fundamental and applied microbial research have been focused on a very limited number of isolated single strains. This is because many microorganisms require specific culture conditions or depend on symbiotic interactions for growth and, therefore, are difficult to study. Consequently, the majority of microbial diversity remains uncultured and poorly characterized. This means that we have yet to discover the major fraction of the microbial potential available in nature.

BaseClear offers unique solutions for research on complex microbial samples such as deep-sea soil samples, sludge, hundreds of year old samples from alkaline and acidic environments, faeces, intestinal content samples, decaying wood, oral or vaginal swabs, among others, to generate pure cultures in a high-throughput approach.

BaseClear can identify and characterise new microbial strains and activities using;

• Growth media
• pH range
• Temperature range
• Dilutions
• Pre-treatments and enrichments

Culturomics as complementary method to metagenomics

Culturomics can be used as a complementary technique to metagenome analysis. Metagenome analysis provides genetic information about the abundant microorganisms present in a complex microbial consortium. Due to the challenges in identifying the unknown content of microbial communities, culturomics can provide some of the missing gaps with the added advantage of enabling a better understanding of the physiological, metabolic and ecological roles and potential industrial applications of the generated cultures.