Definitions
Microbiome: The microbes (bacteria, archaea, fungi, protists, and viruses) that inhabit a specific environment or host, such as all the microbes that live in and on the human body.
Mesophile: An organism that grows and thrives within a moderate temperature range, usually between 20° and 45 °C.
Fastidious Organism: An organism that has very specific and usually complex growth requirements.
Microbial Commensalism: Interaction between two species where one benefits but does not harm or affect the other.
Microbial Mutualism: Interaction between two species where both organisms benefit.
Introduction
Only about 1 % of all prokaryotic species in the biosphere are thought to be cultivatable (Handelsman 2004). A few thousand taxa are associated with the human microbiome. The taxa on the skin are mostly cultivatable (ca. 90 %) (Gao et al. 2007), about 50 % of the oral species are cultivable (Dewhirst et al. 2010), and about 50 % of the taxa of the gut microbiome may be cultivable...
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Highlander, S. (2014). Culturing. In: Nelson, K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Metagenomics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6418-1_1-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6418-1_1-1
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