My research uses the genome sequences of fastidious organisms to guide the design of experiments that can shed light on their roles in microbial food webs and their impact on nutrient cycles. Such experiments have helped to contextualize environmental meta data (genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic), uncover new and unusual biogeochemical cycles, and provide hypothesis-based explanations for long standing geochemical observations. A corollary interest is to use genome sequences of uncultivated microbes to design new growth media formulations aimed at bringing them into laboratory culture.