Han Maozhen, Yang Pengshuo, Zhou Hao, Li Hongjun, Ning Kang
Key Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics of the Ministry of Education, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, 430074, China.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2016;939:117-137. doi: 10.1007/978-981-10-1503-8_6.
Microbes are ubiquitous on our planet, and it is well known that the total number of microbial cells on earth is huge. These organisms usually live in communities, and each of these communities has a different taxonomical structure. As such, microbial communities would serve as the largest reservoir of genes and genetic functions for a vast number of applications in "bio"-related disciplines, especially in biomedicine. Human microbiome is the area in which the relationships between ourselves as hosts and our microbiomes have been examined.In this chapter, we have first reviewed the researches in microbes on community, population and single-cell levels in general. Then we have focused on the effects of recent metagenomics and single-cell advances on human microbiome research, as well as their effects on translational biomedical research. We have also foreseen that with the advancement of big-data analysis techniques, deeper understanding of human microbiome, as well as its broader applications, could be realized.
微生物在我们这个星球上无处不在，而且众所周知，地球上微生物细胞的总数极为庞大。这些生物通常以群落形式存在，并且每个群落都有不同的分类结构。因此，微生物群落将成为大量“生物”相关学科，尤其是生物医学领域众多应用中最大的基因和遗传功能库。人类微生物组是研究宿主自身与微生物组之间关系的领域。在本章中，我们首先总体回顾了在群落、种群和单细胞水平上对微生物的研究。然后我们重点关注了宏基因组学和单细胞技术的最新进展对人类微生物组研究的影响，以及它们对转化生物医学研究的影响。我们还预见，随着大数据分析技术的进步，对人类微生物组的更深入理解及其更广泛的应用将得以实现。
