Unlocking the Pandora’s Box of Uncultivable Microbes: The “iChip” As A Gateway to Antimicrobial Drug Discovery

Abstract

A wide range of microorganisms make up the microbial world, the majority of which have not yet been studied or grown. Thus, the term "microbial dark matter".Modifying artificial nutrient medium only results in a marginal increase in cultivability. So, using naturally occurring combinations of growth factors is an alternate method of cultivating species whose requirements are unknown. By putting cells extracted from various environmental samples into diffusion chambers and subsequently reintroducing them into the natural environment for incubation, this technique cultivates microorganisms. Microorganisms can be grown and separated in axenic culture in a single step by resizing the chambers and putting only one to several cells inside each one. It has been demonstrated that using this cultivation platform-also known as the "iChip" or "isolation chip"-uncultivable bacteria can be successfully isolated. Teixobactin and Clovibactin are novel antibiotics that were extracted from organisms isolated using the iChip. Despite the fact that these novel compounds are still in the earliest phases and cannot be guaranteed to reach the market, the iChip's use ought to contribute to the discovery of additional potentially useful novel antibiotics.