Gellan gum-based nutrient medium increases the diversity of cultivated groups of soil microorganisms

Abstract

Soil microbial communities contain a huge proportion of microorganisms that cannot be cultured on standard microbiological media and are available for study only by molecular methods such as metagenomics. Among them may be found microorganisms-producers of biologically active substances useful for medicine, biotechnology and agricultural activities of humans. Development of approaches for cultivation of such groups may open the way to the creation of fundamentally new antibiotic, antitumor drugs, phyto- and immunostimulants. We have proposed a solid oligotrophic medium for cultivation of soil microorganisms containing gellan gum, which allows to obtain cultures of more rare microorganisms compared to known media. Representatives of phylum Chloroflexota, Deinococcota, Planctomycetota, Actinomycetota, which were absent on agar media, were found in the metagenome of the community grown on this medium