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, it consists of 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
