Institute of Environmental Sciences, Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, Israel.
Department of Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA.
mSystems. 2022 Feb 22;7(1):e0103321. doi: 10.1128/msystems.01033-21. Epub 2022 Jan 11.
A key challenge in microbiome science is the scale mismatch problem, which arises when the scale at which microbial communities are sampled, interrogated, and averaged is different from the scale at which individual microorganisms within those communities interact with each other and with their environment. Profiling the microbial communities in a teaspoon of soil, from a scoop of fecal matter, or along a plant leaf surface represents a scale mismatch of multiple orders of magnitude, which may limit our ability to interpret or predict species interactions and community assembly within such samples. In this Perspective, we explore how economists, who are historically and topically split along the lines of micro- and macroeconomics, deal with the scale mismatch problem, and how taking clues from (micro)economists could benefit the field of microbiomics.
微生物组科学面临的一个关键挑战是规模不匹配问题，当从微生物群落中取样、检测和平均的规模与群落中单个微生物相互作用及其与环境相互作用的规模不同时，就会出现这个问题。从一勺土壤、一匙粪便或一片植物叶片表面中分析微生物群落，代表了多个数量级的规模不匹配，这可能限制了我们解释或预测此类样本中物种相互作用和群落组装的能力。在本观点中，我们探讨了经济学家如何处理规模不匹配问题，他们在历史上和主题上沿着微观和宏观经济学的路线分裂，以及从（微观）经济学家那里获取线索如何使微生物组学领域受益。
