A new frontier in microbiology involves unculturable microorganisms, often called microbial dark matter.

Studying these organisms, including both bacteria and archaea, is challenging due to their complexity and lack of cultivability, so their identities are mostly unknown. Yet they represent a huge reservoir of unexplored microbial diversity and offer intriguing evolutionary insight into the origins of diverse cellular systems.

In our lab, we use cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) and subtomogram averaging (STA) to investigate these communities. These techniques allow us to visualize macromolecular structures directly inside cells,making them ideal for studying such elusive microbes.

Our workflow provides unprecedented insights into how archaeal hosts communicate and helps us understand the structural basis of ectosymbiotic relationships, deepening our knowledge of microbial interactions in their native environments.