Gallardo-Navarro Oscar, Aguilar-Salinas Bernardo, Rocha Jorge, Olmedo-Álvarez Gabriela
Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzado del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Unidad Irapuato, Mexico.
Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas del Noroeste, S. C., La Paz, Mexico.
Heliyon. 2024 Jul 9;10(14):e33896. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e33896. eCollection 2024 Jul 30.
Humans have long relied on microbial communities to create products, produce energy, and treat waste. The microbiota residing within our bodies directly impacts our health, while the soil and rhizosphere microbiomes influence the productivity of our crops. However, the complexity and diversity of microbial communities make them challenging to study and difficult to develop into applications, as they often exhibit the emergence of unpredictable higher-order phenomena. Synthetic ecology aims at simplifying complexity by constituting synthetic or semi-natural microbial communities with reduced diversity that become easier to study and analyze. This strategy combines methodologies that simplify existing complex systems (top-down approach) or build the system from its constituent components (bottom-up approach). Simplified communities are studied to understand how interactions among populations shape the behavior of the community and to model and predict their response to external stimuli. By harnessing the potential of synthetic microbial communities through a multidisciplinary approach, we can advance knowledge of ecological concepts and address critical public health, agricultural, and environmental issues more effectively.
长期以来，人类一直依靠微生物群落来制造产品、生产能源和处理废物。存在于我们体内的微生物群直接影响我们的健康，而土壤和根际微生物群落则影响我们农作物的产量。然而，微生物群落的复杂性和多样性使得它们难以研究，也难以发展成应用，因为它们常常表现出不可预测的高阶现象。合成生态学旨在通过构建多样性降低的合成或半自然微生物群落来简化复杂性，这些群落更易于研究和分析。这种策略结合了简化现有复杂系统的方法（自上而下方法）或从其组成部分构建系统的方法（自下而上方法）。对简化群落进行研究，以了解种群间的相互作用如何塑造群落的行为，并对其对外界刺激的反应进行建模和预测。通过多学科方法利用合成微生物群落的潜力，我们可以推进对生态概念的认识，并更有效地解决关键的公共卫生、农业和环境问题。
