Dinsdale Elizabeth A, Edwards Robert A, Hall Dana, Angly Florent, Breitbart Mya, Brulc Jennifer M, Furlan Mike, Desnues Christelle, Haynes Matthew, Li Linlin, McDaniel Lauren, Moran Mary Ann, Nelson Karen E, Nilsson Christina, Olson Robert, Paul John, Brito Beltran Rodriguez, Ruan Yijun, Swan Brandon K, Stevens Rick, Valentine David L, Thurber Rebecca Vega, Wegley Linda, White Bryan A, Rohwer Forest
Department of Biology, San Diego State University, San Diego, California 92182, USA.
Nature. 2008 Apr 3;452(7187):629-32. doi: 10.1038/nature06810. Epub 2008 Mar 12.
Microbial activities shape the biogeochemistry of the planet and macroorganism health. Determining the metabolic processes performed by microbes is important both for understanding and for manipulating ecosystems (for example, disruption of key processes that lead to disease, conservation of environmental services, and so on). Describing microbial function is hampered by the inability to culture most microbes and by high levels of genomic plasticity. Metagenomic approaches analyse microbial communities to determine the metabolic processes that are important for growth and survival in any given environment. Here we conduct a metagenomic comparison of almost 15 million sequences from 45 distinct microbiomes and, for the first time, 42 distinct viromes and show that there are strongly discriminatory metabolic profiles across environments. Most of the functional diversity was maintained in all of the communities, but the relative occurrence of metabolisms varied, and the differences between metagenomes predicted the biogeochemical conditions of each environment. The magnitude of the microbial metabolic capabilities encoded by the viromes was extensive, suggesting that they serve as a repository for storing and sharing genes among their microbial hosts and influence global evolutionary and metabolic processes.
微生物活动塑造了地球的生物地球化学和大型生物的健康。确定微生物执行的代谢过程对于理解和操纵生态系统都很重要（例如，破坏导致疾病的关键过程、保护生态系统服务等）。由于无法培养大多数微生物以及基因组可塑性水平较高，描述微生物功能受到阻碍。宏基因组学方法分析微生物群落，以确定在任何给定环境中对生长和生存至关重要的代谢过程。在这里，我们对来自45个不同微生物群落以及首次对42个不同病毒群落的近1500万个序列进行了宏基因组比较，结果表明不同环境具有强烈的区分性代谢特征。所有群落中大部分功能多样性得以保持，但代谢的相对发生率有所不同，宏基因组之间的差异预测了每个环境的生物地球化学条件。病毒群落编码的微生物代谢能力范围广泛，这表明它们充当了在其微生物宿主之间存储和共享基因的库，并影响全球进化和代谢过程。
