Culturing Methanotrophic Microbes

Methanotrophic organisms pose a unique challenge in culturing populations. Most methanotrophs are facultative in their reliance on methane. For them to grow without methane however they do require specialized media depending upon the lineage of the methanotroph. This can provide insights about the metabolic activity of the species and insights into what types of populations can be found by testing metabolites and other characteristics of the soil before sampling.