Ward D M, Weller R, Bateson M M
Department of Microbiology, Montana State University, Bozeman 59717.
Nature. 1990 May 3;345(6270):63-5. doi: 10.1038/345063a0.
Microbiologists have been constrained in their efforts to describe the compositions of natural microbial communities using traditional methods. Few microorganisms have sufficiently distinctive morphology to be recognized by microscopy. Culture-dependent methods are biased, as a microorganism can be cultivated only after its physiological niche is perceived and duplicated experimentally. It is therefore widely believed that fewer than 20% of the extant microorganisms have been discovered, and that culture methods are inadequate for studying microbial community composition. In view of the physiological and phylogenetic diversity among microorganisms, speculation that 80% or more of microbes remain undiscovered raises the question of how well we know the Earth's biota and its biochemical potential. We have performed a culture-independent analysis of the composition of a well-studied hot spring microbial community, using a common but distinctive cellular component, 16S ribosomal RNA. Our results confirm speculations about the diversity of uncultured microorganisms it contains.
微生物学家在运用传统方法描述自然微生物群落的组成时受到了限制。很少有微生物具有足够独特的形态以便通过显微镜识别。依赖培养的方法存在偏差，因为只有在微生物的生理生态位被认识并通过实验复制后，该微生物才能被培养。因此，人们普遍认为，已发现的现存微生物不到20%，而且培养方法不足以用于研究微生物群落组成。鉴于微生物之间存在生理和系统发育多样性，推测80%或更多的微生物仍未被发现，这就引发了一个问题：我们对地球生物群及其生化潜力的了解程度究竟如何。我们利用一种常见但独特的细胞成分——16S核糖体RNA，对一个经过充分研究的温泉微生物群落的组成进行了非培养分析。我们的结果证实了关于其所含未培养微生物多样性的推测。
