The impact of culturomics on taxonomy in clinical microbiology

Over the past decade, new culture methods coupled to genome and metagenome sequencing have enabled the number of isolated bacterial species with standing in nomenclature to rise to more than 15,000 whereas it was only 1791 in 1980. ‘Culturomics’, a new approach based on the diversification of culture conditions, has enabled the isolation of more than 1000 distinct human-associated bacterial species since 2012, including 247 new species. This strategy was demonstrated to be complementary to metagenome sequencing for the exhaustive study of the human microbiota and its roles in health and diseases. However, by identifying a large number of new bacterial species in a short time, culturomics has highlighted a need for taxonomic approaches adapted to clinical microbiology that would include the use of modern and reproducible tools, including high throughput genomic and proteomic analyses. Herein, we review the development of culturomics and genomics in the clinical microbiology field and their impact on bacterial taxonomy.