Pedrós-Alió Carlos
Department of Marine Biology and Oceanography, ICM, CMIMA-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain.
Int Microbiol. 2006 Sep;9(3):191-7.
Genomics has brought about a revolution in all fields of biology. Before the development of microbial ecology in the 1970s, microbes were not even considered in marine ecological studies. Today we know that half of the total primary production of the planet must be credited to microorganisms. This and other discoveries have changed dramatically the perspective and the focus of marine microbial ecology. The application of genomics-based approaches has provided new challenges and has allowed the discovery of novel functions, an appreciation of the great diversity of microorganisms, and the introduction of controversial ideas regarding the concepts of species, genome, and niche. Nevertheless, thorough knowledge of the traditional disciplines of biology is necessary to explore the possibilities arising from these new insights. This work reviews the different genomic techniques that can be applied to marine microbial ecology, including both sequencing of the complete genomes of microorganisms and metagenomics, which, in turn, can be complemented with the study of mRNAs (transcriptomics) and proteins (proteomics). The example of proteorhodopsin illustrates the type of information that can be gained from these approaches. A genomics perspective constitutes a map that will allow microbiologists to focus their research on potentially more productive aspects.
基因组学给生物学的各个领域带来了一场革命。在20世纪70年代微生物生态学发展之前，海洋生态研究甚至都没有考虑到微生物。如今我们知道，地球上一半的初级生产总量都应归功于微生物。这一发现以及其他发现极大地改变了海洋微生物生态学的视角和重点。基于基因组学方法的应用带来了新的挑战，也使得人们发现了新的功能，认识到了微生物的巨大多样性，并引入了有关物种、基因组和生态位概念的有争议的观点。然而，要探索这些新见解带来的可能性，深入了解传统生物学学科是必要的。这项工作回顾了可应用于海洋微生物生态学的不同基因组技术，包括微生物全基因组测序和宏基因组学，反过来，宏基因组学又可以通过对信使核糖核酸（转录组学）和蛋白质（蛋白质组学）的研究得到补充。视紫红质的例子说明了从这些方法中可以获得的信息类型。基因组学视角构成了一幅地图，将使微生物学家能够将研究重点放在可能更有成效的方面。
