Percent of well-studied microbial communities, such as the human distal gut, that have been cultured

Range 20 to 40 %
Organism Microbes
Reference Huse SM, Dethlefsen L, Huber JA, Mark Welch D, Relman DA, Sogin ML. Exploring microbial diversity and taxonomy using SSU rRNA hypervariable tag sequencing. PLoS Genet. 2008 Nov4(11):e1000255. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1000255. p.2 left column top paragraphPubMed ID19023400
Comments "It is now evident that microbiologists have been successful in culturing fewer than one percent of the different kinds of single cell organisms from most microbial communities [25]. Even for well-studied communities, such as the human distal gut, only 20–40% of the microbes have been cultured."
Entered by Uri M
ID 109669