Cultivation of microbes from the deep-sea environments

The deep-sea environment has rich microbial resources, and these resources have been an important subject in the efforts to culture microflora. Special devices that maintain in situ pressures have been developed and applied in culturing piezophilic and hyperpiezophilic microbes. However, culturable microorganisms comprise the minority of deep-sea microbes (archaea and bacteria), which reflects the disadvantages of traditional cultivation methods, the ignorance of microbial habitats, and the fastidiousness of microbial growth requirements. This mini-review introduces the diversity of microbes in the deep sea and discusses the deep-sea species that have been identified in the past two years. In addition, this review summarizes almost all of the recognized piezophilic microbes and describes the isolation methods that have been employed. Additionally, we recommend that some of the methods that have been developed to obtain microbes from surface water, freshwater, sediments, soils and organisms should be modified to enable the isolation of the deep-sea microbes. It is anticipated that this mini-review will provide novel insights into exploration of “uncultured” deep-sea microbial resources.