Each spot on this agar plate is a bacterial colony recovered from a marine sponge sample. By the time a colony is visible to the human eye, there are at least one million cells. Less than one percent of bacteria can be grown under laboratory conditions, suggesting that there is a large reservoir of unknown microbial diversity. As a result, microbiologists use a combination of cultivation and molecular genetic characterizations to examine microbial communities. Images Courtesy of the Twilight Zone Expedition Team 2007, NOAA-OE.
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Cayman Islands Twilight Zone 2007
