The development of the field of metagenomics―the study of genetic material from environmental samples―has revolutionized how we observe and discover new species. Many bacteria cannot be independently cultivated in the lab. Sometimes this is because the medium they are grown in is not suitable, sometimes it is because these bacteria thrive only in multispecies communities (such as many bacteria in our gut!) and sometimes this is because they can only grow in relation to another larger organism. A group of bacteria belonging to the final category are Candidatus phylum Dependentiae. Not much is known about this group because thus far, only three strains belonging to it have been isolated. But in a recent study, published in Microbiology Resource Announcements, Professor Masaharu Takemura from Tokyo University of Science (TUS) has succeeded in isolating the fourth such strain―Noda2021.
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Source: Phys.org