Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA.
Clin Microbiol Infect. 2012 Jul;18 Suppl 4:8-11. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-0691.2012.03861.x.
The knowledge that our bodies are home to microbes is not new; van Leeuwenhoek first saw the microbes of the mouth and gut over three centuries ago. However, next generation sequencing technologies are enabling us to characterize our microbial consortia on an unprecedented scale, and are providing new insights into the range of variability of our microbiota and their contributions to our health. The microbiota far outnumber the human component of our selves, with 10 times more cells and at least 100 times more genes. Moreover, while individuals share over 99.9% of their human genome sequence, there are vast differences in the microbiome (the collection of genes of our associated microbes). This raises the question of the extent to which our microbial community determines our human physiological responses and susceptibility to disease. In order to develop technologies that allow us to manipulate the microbiome to improve health we must first understand the factors that influence spatial and temporal variation, stability in response to perturbation, and conditions that induce community-wide changes.
我们的身体是微生物的家园，这并不是什么新鲜事；早在三个多世纪前，列文虎克就首次观察到了口腔和肠道中的微生物。然而，下一代测序技术使我们能够以前所未有的规模来描述我们的微生物群落，并为我们提供了有关微生物组的多样性及其对我们健康的贡献的新见解。微生物的数量远远超过了我们自身的人类成分，细胞数量是人类的 10 倍，基因数量至少是人类的 100 倍。此外，虽然个体之间人类基因组序列的相似度超过 99.9%，但微生物组（我们相关微生物的基因集合）却存在巨大差异。这就提出了一个问题，即我们的微生物群落在多大程度上决定了我们人类的生理反应和对疾病的易感性。为了开发允许我们操纵微生物组以改善健康的技术，我们必须首先了解影响空间和时间变化、对干扰的稳定性以及引起全社区变化的条件的因素。
