Question

How can culturing microbes in media in a lab, bias our perception of the abundance and diversity of microbes in the natural environment?

Answer 1

Answer:

In the natural environment, there are two types of microorganisms found, viz, Culturable microorganisms and Non-culturable microorganisms. The non-culturable microbes are alive cells but have some special adaptive properties which make them nearly impossible to grow in the culture media. Some microbes need unique environmental conditions and nutrient supplements which cannot be imitated in the laboratories. In the laboratory, we can only grow the microorganisms whose cultivating conditions can be imitated.
The inability to grow the non-culturable microbes limits our knowledge towards them. In most cases, we even do not know the existence of such microorganisms. This affects our view regarding the verse diversity of microorganisms present in nature.