Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, 4249 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA.
Integr Comp Biol. 2017 Oct 1;57(4):674-681. doi: 10.1093/icb/icx013.
Research on host-associated microbial communities has grown rapidly. Despite the great body of work, inclusion of microbiota-related questions into integrative and comparative biology is still lagging behind other disciplines. The purpose of this paper is to offer an introduction into the basic tools and techniques of host-microbe research. Specifically, what considerations should be made before embarking on such projects (types of samples, types of controls)? How is microbiome data analyzed and integrated with data measured from the hosts? How can researchers experimentally manipulate the microbiome? With this information, integrative and comparative biologists should be able to include host-microbe studies into their research and push the boundaries of both fields.
宿主相关微生物群落的研究发展迅速。尽管已经取得了大量的研究成果，但将与微生物组相关的问题纳入综合比较生物学的研究仍然落后于其他学科。本文旨在为宿主-微生物研究的基本工具和技术提供介绍。具体而言，在开展此类项目之前应考虑哪些因素（样本类型、对照类型）？如何分析微生物组数据并将其与宿主测量的数据进行整合？研究人员如何通过实验来操纵微生物组？有了这些信息，综合比较生物学家应该能够将宿主-微生物研究纳入他们的研究，并推动这两个领域的发展。
