Microbial Diversity and Culture Collections Hotspots in 2024

Dear Colleagues,

First published in 2009, we are now proud to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Diversity. To mark this occasion, a Special Issue dedicated to the field of “Microbial Diversity and Culture Collections Hotspots in 2024” is being prepared.

Environmental threats such as chemical pollution, overexploitation of forests, and urban growth still continue. In addition, with the defrosting of the permafrost, microbial diversity and ecosystems are also changing. Rising sea levels in the Pacific and Oceania are also altering the microbial existence and microorganisms’ functions. In view of the pressures of climate change, questions on how microbial diversity might be affected are timely and persistent. Predictions regarding the loss of microbial diversity are difficult to make, as the evidence and data on the true existence of microorganisms at different niches are patchy. If microorganisms cannot adapt to new environmental conditions, they will be replaced with ones that can. Microorganisms that cannot alter their metabolisms are susceptible to habitat disturbances. The impact of geographical, environmental, geological and climate changes on microflora can only be understood with continuous surveys using modern molecular tools, as well as by culturing the key representatives of microbial diversity and preserving them in culture collections, which play a key role in the preservation of new representatives from these changing ecosystems.

Here, we invite researchers to contribute papers containing microbial diversity including metagenome analysis of different microbial niches, leading to the selective culturing of rare taxa as well as defining their key genes and their long-term preservation in culture collections to fill the gaps in knowledge regarding the true compositions and functional diversity of microorganisms in natural environments.  Experts in the field are invited to submit high-quality papers to this Special Issue. 

Dr. Ipek Kurtboke
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Diversity is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• microbial diversity
• functional diversity
• selective isolation
• culturable and unculturable diversity
• microbial genetic resources
• conservation
• preservation
• culture collections
• biological resource centres
• unexplored microbial diversity
• metagenomics
• bioinformatics