Kysela David T, Randich Amelia M, Caccamo Paul D, Brun Yves V
Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, United States of America.
PLoS Biol. 2016 Oct 3;14(10):e1002565. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002565. eCollection 2016 Oct.
The modern age of metagenomics has delivered unprecedented volumes of data describing the genetic and metabolic diversity of bacterial communities, but it has failed to provide information about coincident cellular morphologies. Much like metabolic and biosynthetic capabilities, morphology comprises a critical component of bacterial fitness, molded by natural selection into the many elaborate shapes observed across the bacterial domain. In this essay, we discuss the diversity of bacterial morphology and its implications for understanding both the mechanistic and the adaptive basis of morphogenesis. We consider how best to leverage genomic data and recent experimental developments in order to advance our understanding of bacterial shape and its functional importance.
宏基因组学的现代时代带来了前所未有的大量数据，描述了细菌群落的遗传和代谢多样性，但它未能提供有关同时存在的细胞形态的信息。与代谢和生物合成能力一样，形态是细菌适应性的关键组成部分，通过自然选择塑造出细菌域中观察到的许多复杂形状。在本文中，我们讨论了细菌形态的多样性及其对理解形态发生的机制和适应性基础的意义。我们考虑如何最好地利用基因组数据和最近的实验进展，以推进我们对细菌形状及其功能重要性的理解。
