Mining traits for the enrichment and isolation of not-yet-cultured populations

BACKGROUND: The lack of pure cultures limits our understanding into 99% of bacteria. Proper interpretation of the genetic and the transcriptional datasets can reveal clues for the enrichment and even isolation of the not-yet-cultured populations. Unraveling such information requires a proper mining method. RESULTS: Here, we present a method to infer the hidden traits for the enrichment of not-yet-cultured populations. We demonstrate this method using Candidatus Accumulibacter. Our method constructs a whole picture of the carbon, electron, and energy flows in the not-yet-cultured populations from the genomic datasets. Then, it decodes the coordination across three flows from the transcriptional datasets. Based on it, our method diagnoses the status of the not-yet-cultured populations and provides strategy to optimize the enrichment systems. CONCLUSION: Our method could shed light to the exploration into the bacterial dark matter in the environments. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s40168-019-0708-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.