Uncultured microorganisms as a source of secondary metabolites

The vast majority of microbial species are ‘uncultured’ and do not grow under laboratory conditions. This has led to the development of a number of methods to culture these organisms in a simulated natural environment. Approaches include placing cells in chambers that allow diffusion of compounds from the natural environment, traps enclosed with porous membranes that specifically capture organisms forming hyphae—actinobacteria and microfungi, and growth in the presence of cultivable helper species. Repeated cultivation in situ produces domesticated variants that can grow on regular media in vitro, and can be scaled up for secondary metabolite production. The co-culture approach has led to the identification of the first class of growth factors for uncultured bacteria, iron-chelating siderophores. It appears that many uncultured organisms from diverse taxonomical groups have lost the ability to produce siderophores, and depend on neighboring species for growth. The new cultivation approaches allow for the exploitation of the secondary metabolite potential of the previously inaccessible microorganisms.