Riesenfeld Christian S, Schloss Patrick D, Handelsman Jo
Department of Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
Annu Rev Genet. 2004;38:525-52. doi: 10.1146/annurev.genet.38.072902.091216.
Uncultured microorganisms comprise the majority of the planet's biological diversity. Microorganisms represent two of the three domains of life and contain vast diversity that is the product of an estimated 3.8 billion years of evolution. In many environments, as many as 99% of the microorganisms cannot be cultured by standard techniques, and the uncultured fraction includes diverse organisms that are only distantly related to the cultured ones. Therefore, culture-independent methods are essential to understand the genetic diversity, population structure, and ecological roles of the majority of microorganisms. Metagenomics, or the culture-independent genomic analysis of an assemblage of microorganisms, has potential to answer fundamental questions in microbial ecology. This review describes progress toward understanding the biology of uncultured Bacteria, Archaea, and viruses through metagenomic analyses.
未培养的微生物构成了地球上生物多样性的大部分。微生物代表了生命的三个域中的两个，并且包含了巨大的多样性，这是大约38亿年进化的产物。在许多环境中，多达99%的微生物无法通过标准技术进行培养，未培养的部分包括与已培养微生物亲缘关系甚远的各种生物。因此，非培养方法对于理解大多数微生物的遗传多样性、种群结构和生态作用至关重要。宏基因组学，即对一组微生物进行非培养的基因组分析，有潜力回答微生物生态学中的基本问题。本综述描述了通过宏基因组分析在理解未培养细菌、古菌和病毒生物学方面取得的进展。
