Advancing gut microbiome research using cultivation

Culture-independent approaches have driven the field of microbiome research and illuminated intricate relationships between the gut microbiota and human health. However, definitively associating phenotypes to specific strains or elucidating physiological interactions is challenging for metagenomic approaches. Recently a number of new approaches to gut microbiota cultivation have emerged through the integration of high-throughput phylogenetic mapping and new simplified cultivation methods. These methodologies are described along with their potential use within microbiome research. Deployment of novel cultivation approaches should enable improved studies of xenobiotic tolerance and modification phenotypes and allow a drastic expansion of the gut microbiota reference genome catalogues. Furthermore, the new cultivation methods should facilitate systematic studies of the causal relationship between constituents of the microbiota and human health accelerating new probiotic development.