Delft University of Technology, Department of Biotechnology, Delft, The Netherlands.
Delft University of Technology, Department of Biotechnology, Delft, The Netherlands.
Curr Opin Biotechnol. 2021 Feb;67:158-165. doi: 10.1016/j.copbio.2021.01.017. Epub 2021 Feb 14.
Natural microbial communities are composed of a large diversity of interacting microorganisms, each with a specific role in the functional properties of the ecosystem. The objectives in microbial ecology research are related to identifying, understanding and exploring the role of these different microorganisms. Because of the rapidly increasing power of DNA sequencing and the rapid increase of genomic data, main attention of microbial ecology research shifted from cultivation-oriented studies towards metagenomic studies. Despite these efforts, the direct link between the molecular properties and the measurable changes in the functional performance of the ecosystem is often poorly documented. A quantitative understanding of functional properties in relation to the molecular changes requires effective integration, standardization, and parallelization of experiments. High-resolution functional characterization is a prerequisite for interpretation of changes in metagenomic properties, and will improve our understanding of microbial communities and facilitate their exploration for health and circular economy related objectives.
自然微生物群落由大量相互作用的微生物组成，每个微生物在生态系统的功能特性方面都具有特定的作用。微生物生态学研究的目标与识别、理解和探索这些不同微生物的作用有关。由于 DNA 测序能力的迅速提高和基因组数据的快速增长，微生物生态学研究的主要注意力已经从以培养为导向的研究转向了宏基因组学研究。尽管做出了这些努力，但分子特性与生态系统功能性能可测量变化之间的直接联系往往记录得很少。要想在分子变化方面对功能特性有定量的理解，就需要对实验进行有效的整合、标准化和并行化。高分辨率功能表征是解释宏基因组特性变化的前提条件，它将增进我们对微生物群落的理解，并有助于我们为健康和循环经济相关目标探索微生物群落。
