Ogilvie Lesley A, Firouzmand Sepinoud, Jones Brian V
Centre for Biomedical and Health Science Research, School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK.
Bioeng Bugs. 2012 Jan 1;3(1):13-31. doi: 10.4161/bbug.3.1.17883.
Numerous mobile genetic elements (MGE) are associated with the human gut microbiota and collectively referred to as the gut mobile metagenome. The role of this flexible gene pool in development and functioning of the gut microbial community remains largely unexplored, yet recent evidence suggests that at least some MGE comprising this fraction of the gut microbiome reflect the co-evolution of host and microbe in the gastro-intestinal tract. In conjunction, the high level of novel gene content typical of MGE coupled with their predicted high diversity, suggests that the mobile metagenome constitutes an immense and largely unexplored gene-space likely to encode many novel activities with potential biotechnological or pharmaceutical value, as well as being important to the development and functioning of the gut microbiota. Of the various types of MGE that comprise the gut mobile metagenome, plasmids are of particular importance since these elements are often capable of autonomous transfer between disparate bacterial species, and are known to encode accessory functions that increase bacterial fitness in a given environment facilitating bacterial adaptation. In this article current knowledge regarding plasmids resident in the human gut mobile metagenome is reviewed, and available strategies to access and characterize this portion of the gut microbiome are described. The relative merits of these methods and their present as well as prospective impact on our understanding of the human gut microbiota is discussed.
众多移动遗传元件（MGE）与人类肠道微生物群相关，统称为肠道移动宏基因组。这个灵活的基因库在肠道微生物群落的发育和功能中所起的作用在很大程度上仍未被探索，但最近的证据表明，构成肠道微生物组这一部分的至少一些MGE反映了宿主与胃肠道微生物的共同进化。此外，MGE典型的高水平新基因含量及其预测的高多样性表明，移动宏基因组构成了一个巨大且很大程度上未被探索的基因空间，可能编码许多具有潜在生物技术或药学价值的新活性，并且对肠道微生物群的发育和功能也很重要。在构成肠道移动宏基因组的各种类型的MGE中，质粒尤为重要，因为这些元件通常能够在不同细菌物种之间自主转移，并且已知它们编码辅助功能，这些功能可提高细菌在给定环境中的适应性，促进细菌适应。本文综述了关于人类肠道移动宏基因组中质粒的现有知识，并描述了获取和表征肠道微生物组这一部分的可用策略。讨论了这些方法的相对优点及其对我们理解人类肠道微生物群的当前以及未来影响。
