The Slow Growth Movement – Or Why Microbiologists May Have Been Doing it All Wrong

Growing microbes on nutrient-rich plates, as is done in most microbiology laboratories, may not be representative of real-world conditions. (Image: NIH) For decades, thousands of researchers around the world have spent their professional careers studying the inner workings of microorganisms - their genetic predispositions, their responses to different conditions, their rates of growth and activity. But what if the premise was all wrong? Lab-based work almost always involves single species studies done in rich medium that enables exponential growth, where doubling rates are limited not by food or specific nutrients but by the organism’s inner workings. But clearly this accelerated growth state is not representative of microbes in the real world, where competition and resource scarcity set growth limits. In a recent article for Nature Reviews Microbiology, Megan Bergkessel and colleagues point out this discrepancy and try to bridge the gap of traditional culture-based and environmental microbiology. Some nuance: the ...