So happy this is finally out and congratulations to this awesome team. I have been obsessed with this figure for over a year now and for very good reasons as these results bear implications that promise to fundamentally change the microbiome industry and associated therapeutic efforts that rely on microbes. By comparing well over 1 million microbial genomes from cultured and uncultured organisms we found that: ✨ over 95% of the sequenced species of cultivated microbes cannot be recovered from any of the 40K metagenomic samples across all habitats on the planet we have analyzed (orange part of the venn diagram). ✨ this suggests that the vast majority of cultivated microbial species are not sufficiently abundant in any environment to be captured through metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs). ✨ with over 1.5 million genomes of both cultivated and uncultivated microbes, there remains an enormous diversity of microbial species that we have yet to genomically characterize (grey portion of the venn diagram). This vast diversity offers a glimpse into the rare microbial biosphere of our planet. Its relative presence across ecosystems is a great indicator of each habitat’s resilience and ability to recover from environmental changes. There is much more to explore and discuss on this topic in future work. ✨ we are now working on a hypothesis to explain the very low abundance of cultivated organisms in natural habitats and through that pioneer novel approaches for stable and robust microbial therapeutic interventions. ✨ beyond these incredibly exciting implications, what all this means for all microbial ecologists out there? Based on this ground work, JGI will soon be able to provide a way to let its users know if any newly identified species is part of this rare biosphere, or completely novel species and if in rare biosphere, where else was it seen before. More on this to follow soon!