iCarbonX, Shahe Industrial Zone, No.4018 Qiaoxiang Road, Nanshan District, Shenzhen 518083, China.
Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Human Commensal Microorganisms and Health Research, BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518083, China.
Nat Rev Microbiol. 2016 Aug;14(8):508-22. doi: 10.1038/nrmicro.2016.83. Epub 2016 Jul 11.
Metagenome-wide association studies (MWAS) have enabled the high-resolution investigation of associations between the human microbiome and several complex diseases, including type 2 diabetes, obesity, liver cirrhosis, colorectal cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. The associations that can be identified by MWAS are not limited to the identification of taxa that are more or less abundant, as is the case with taxonomic approaches, but additionally include the identification of microbial functions that are enriched or depleted. In this Review, we summarize recent findings from MWAS and discuss how these findings might inform the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human disease in the future. Furthermore, we highlight the need to better characterize the biology of many of the bacteria that are found in the human microbiota as an essential step in understanding how bacterial strains that have been identified by MWAS are associated with disease.
宏基因组关联研究 (MWAS) 使得对人类微生物组与多种复杂疾病（包括 2 型糖尿病、肥胖症、肝硬化、结直肠癌和类风湿性关节炎）之间的关联进行高分辨率研究成为可能。MWAS 可以识别的关联不仅限于通过分类学方法确定或多或少丰富的分类群，还包括鉴定富集或耗尽的微生物功能。在这篇综述中，我们总结了 MWAS 的最新发现，并讨论了这些发现如何为未来人类疾病的预防、诊断和治疗提供信息。此外，我们强调需要更好地描述人类微生物组中发现的许多细菌的生物学特性，这是理解通过 MWAS 鉴定的细菌菌株如何与疾病相关的重要步骤。
