Center for Infection and Immunity, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 722 West 168th Street, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Microbiol Mol Biol Rev. 2010 Sep;74(3):363-77. doi: 10.1128/MMBR.00007-10.
Platforms for pathogen discovery have improved since the days of Koch and Pasteur; nonetheless, the challenges of proving causation are at least as daunting as they were in the late 1800 s. Although we will almost certainly continue to accumulate low-hanging fruit, where simple relationships will be found between the presence of a cultivatable agent and a disease, these successes will be increasingly infrequent. The future of the field rests instead in our ability to follow footprints of infectious agents that cannot be characterized using classical microbiological techniques and to develop the laboratory and computational infrastructure required to dissect complex host-microbe interactions. I have tried to refine the criteria used by Koch and successors to prove linkage to disease. These refinements are working constructs that will continue to evolve in light of new technologies, new models, and new insights. What will endure is the excitement of the chase. Happy hunting!
自科赫和巴斯德时代以来，病原体发现的平台已经得到了改善；尽管如此，证明因果关系的挑战至少和 19 世纪末一样艰巨。尽管我们肯定会继续积累简单的关系，即在可培养的病原体存在与疾病之间找到简单的关系，但这些成功将越来越少。该领域的未来在于我们能够追踪无法使用经典微生物技术进行特征描述的传染性病原体的足迹，并开发出必要的实验室和计算基础设施来剖析复杂的宿主-微生物相互作用。我试图改进科赫及其后继者用来证明与疾病联系的标准。这些改进是工作结构，将根据新技术、新模型和新见解不断发展。持久的将是追逐的兴奋。狩猎愉快！
