And then you have the fun media like Blood Agar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agar_plate#Blood_agar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agar_plate#Blood_agar). But

And then you have the fun media like Blood Agar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agar_plate#Blood_agar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agar_plate#Blood_agar). But it's not just finding the right media, many microbes are obligate symbionts meaning that we'll never be able to culture them in isolation. I vaguely recall a spc. of Mycoplasma that would only grow in the presence of a peptidoglycan matrix containing E. coli (though it's been a while, so I could be misremembering). For situations like this, having the ability to do raw analysis on environmental DNA is hugely beneficial.