by Paul Carini — Some­times, to move ahead, you must take a look at where you have been. Cul­tur­ing mi­crobes is a foun­da­tional un­der­pin­ning of mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy. Be­fore genome se­quenc­ing, re­searchers spent count­less hours te­diously de­duc­ing the nu­tri­tional re­quire­ments of bac­te­r­ial iso­lates and tin­ker­ing with medium for­mu­la­tions to en­tice new mi­crobes into cul­ture. This art of cul­ti­va­tion took a back seat to the pow­er­ful mol­e­c­u­lar tools of the last 25 years, and...