Spongebob, witchcraft and the culturability of marine microorganisms

Microorganisms isolated from the marine environment are potentially a rich source of novel compounds such as antibiotics. However, marine biodiscovery programmes are strongly hampered by the fact that only a very small proportion (around 0.2%) of the microorganisms that are present in the marine environment are culturable in the lab. In this talk we will discuss our previous work on the manipulation of microbes and how this will be adapted to enhance the culturability of marine microorganisms.