Bioinformatics Program, Department of Biology, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, United States.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2011 Aug;22(4):541-6. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2011.04.018. Epub 2011 May 16.
The metabolic capabilities of many environmentally and medically important microbes can be quantitatively explored using systems biology approaches to metabolic networks. Yet, as we learn more about the complex microbe-microbe and microbe-environment interactions in microbial communities, it is important to understand whether and how system-level approaches can be extended to the ecosystem level. Here we summarize recent work that addresses these challenges at multiple scales, starting from two-species natural and synthetic ecology models, up to biosphere-level approaches. Among the many fascinating open challenges in this field is whether the integration of high throughput sequencing methods and mathematical models will help us capture emerging principles of ecosystem-level metabolic organization and evolution.
使用代谢网络系统生物学方法可以定量探索许多环境和医学重要微生物的代谢能力。然而，随着我们对微生物群落中复杂的微生物-微生物和微生物-环境相互作用了解得更多，了解系统水平的方法是否以及如何可以扩展到生态系统水平是很重要的。在这里，我们总结了最近在多个尺度上解决这些挑战的工作，从两个物种的自然和合成生态模型，到生物圈水平的方法。在这个领域中，有许多令人着迷的开放性挑战，其中之一是高通量测序方法和数学模型的整合是否有助于我们捕捉到生态系统水平代谢组织和进化的新兴原则。
