TAMING THE BEAST: Colored scanning electron micrograph of a segmented filamentous bacterium (SFB, orange) reaching up from a bed of mouse intestinal cells (green). SFB was successfully cultured for the first time this year, a half a century after it was first discovered.COURTESY OF PAMELA SCHNUPF. NATURE, 520:99-103, 2015.
In 2001, Nicole Dubilier, a marine biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, made a surprising discovery—two symbiotic bacterial species living inside a gutless marine worm, Olavius algarvensis. To better understand the unique relationship among the three species, Dubilier set out to culture the two symbionts. But nearly 15 years later, she has yet to successfully grow the bacteria in the lab.
Her best attempt kept the microbes alive for about 10 months, Dubilier says, but then the culture “just died on us. . . . It’s a kamikaze project. How long can you have someone put in all their effort if it’s constantly unsuccessful?”
Dubilier is hardly alone in her plight. A heaping teaspoon of soil or a shot ...
