The Challenges of Studying the Anaerobic Microbial World

Studies on strictly anaerobic microorganisms represent one of the most challenging areas of research, because anaerobic conditions (oxygen-free) need to be reconstructed to understand microbial activities and to obtain enrichments and pure culture. It is well-known that the micro/macro anaerobic environments are present everywhere on the Earth, and anaerobes comprise complex communities that play an important role in the carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles on earth (49). Microbial community studies using 16S rRNA gene, as well as various functional genes, have offered new insights into anaerobic microbial ecology. Furthermore, numerous new lines of evidence offered by recent omics-driven and high-throughput sequencing studies provide a new vision of the anaerobic microbial world.