Unknowledgeables Promote “Unculturables”

Abstract

Scotoma is defined as “a regression or loss of insight and knowledge,” and has afflicted many fields of science [see O. Sacks in Robert B. Silvers (ed.), Hidden Histories of Science, New York Review Books, 1995]. A scotoma has enveloped many molecular biologists who apparently have forgotten or are unaware of a century of discoveries on the complexities of bacterial nutrition. For more than a decade, reports continue to appear which contain statements of the following kind: “More than 99% of prokaryotes in the environment cannot be cultured in the laboratory, a phenomenon that limits our understanding of microbial physiology, genetics and community ecology. One way around this problem is metagenomics…” (P. D. Schloss and J. Handelsman, Genome Biol. 6:229, 2005). Numerous similar examples in the current literature are evoked in Google searches for “unculturability.”