The Symbiotic Bacterial Strain Bank (SBSB) consists of a collection of approximately 2000 bacterial strains, all isolated from healthy human fecal donors. It is a broad collection of isolates representing the gut microbiome that have been anaerobically cultured and characterized phenotypically and genotypically. In addition to banking strains and serving as an invaluable resource to the UChicago microbiome community, the SBSB team conducts experiments to identify optimum growth conditions for these isolates to maximize their metabolic potential. Those experiments in turn enable the team to screen candidate strains and select the ones capable of restoring gut function through their ability to produce beneficial metabolites.