Microbial Resource Management

Dear Colleagues,

For a long time, microbiologists struggled with the concept of “mixed cultures”. Scientific data had to be reliable and reproducible and descriptions of mixed cultures, consortia, microcosms, etc, were to be considered with care because their validity could be questionable. Yet, at the same time, the mixed cultures in and around us, and in the overall ecosystems in which we live, are responsible for a plethora of crucial actions, sometimes detrimental, but most often very positive for the quality of our lives and for life in general on the planet.

The concept of “microbial resource management” is analogous to that of “human resource management”. We all are aware that in a dynamic open environment, be it human or microbial, there is a need for complementing talents, traits, and capacities by bringing various actuators together in a proper setting. Once the proper team is established, there is a need to maintain it by constant exchange of information and distribution of mutual gains. Clearly, be it the science of scouting for top performers, the knowledge of maintaining such top performers either as “pure” cultures or as “microbiomes” in culture collections, the engineering capacity to guarantee the functionality of industrially important microbiomes in various agro and environmental industries—all these aspects are currently very much in the front line of fundamental science and also of industrial microbiology and environmental technology.

Prof. Willy Verstraete
Guest Editor

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