Kastenmüller Gabi, Gasteiger Johann, Mewes Hans-Werner
Institute of Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Neuherberg, Germany.
Bioinformatics. 2008 Aug 15;24(16):i56-62. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btn302.
In principle, an organism's ability to survive in a speci.c environment, is an observable result of the organism's regulatory and metabolic capabilities. Nonetheless, current knowledge about the global relation of the metabolisms and the niches of organisms is still limited.
In order to further investigate this relation, we grouped species showing similar metabolic capabilities and systematically mapped their habitats onto these groups. For this purpose, we predicted the metabolic capabilities for 214 sequenced genomes. Based on these predictions, we grouped the genomes by hierarchical clustering. Finally, we mapped different environmental conditions and diseases related to the genomes onto the resulting clusters. This mapping uncovered several conditions and diseases that were unexpectedly enriched in clusters of metabolically similar species. As an example, Encephalitozoon cuniculi--a microsporidian causing a multisystemic disease accompanied by CNS problems in rabbits--occurred in the same metabolism-based cluster as bacteria causing similar symptoms in humans.
Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
原则上，生物体在特定环境中生存的能力是其调节和代谢能力的可观察结果。尽管如此，目前关于生物体代谢与生态位之间全局关系的知识仍然有限。
为了进一步研究这种关系，我们将具有相似代谢能力的物种进行分组，并将它们的栖息地系统地映射到这些组上。为此，我们预测了214个已测序基因组的代谢能力。基于这些预测，我们通过层次聚类对基因组进行分组。最后，我们将与基因组相关的不同环境条件和疾病映射到所得的聚类上。这种映射揭示了一些在代谢相似物种的聚类中意外富集的条件和疾病。例如，兔脑胞内原虫——一种引起兔多系统疾病并伴有中枢神经系统问题的微孢子虫——与在人类中引起类似症状的细菌出现在同一个基于代谢的聚类中。
补充数据可在《生物信息学》在线获取。
