Microbial dark matter

Microbial dark matter comprises the vast majority of microbial organisms (usually bacteria and archaea) that biologists are unable to culture in lab due to lack of knowledge or ability to supply the required growth conditions. It is hard to estimate the relative magnitude of the dark matter, but the accepted gross estimate is that less than one percent of microbial species in a given ecological niche is culturable. In recent years effort is being put to decipher more of the microbial dark matter by means of learning their genome DNA sequence from environmental samples and then by gaining insights to their metabolism from their sequenced genome, promoting the knowledge required for their cultivation.