追寻被“遗漏”的微生物

Seeking of “missed” microorganisms

摘要:

人类对生态环境中微生物的认识从依赖于纯培养微生物的研究阶段已进入到结合各种组学方法的微生物群落代谢机制的研究阶段。在微生物群落组成的研究中, 基于“通用”引物的PCR扩增方法会“遗漏”很多种类微生物, 因此需要探索一些方法, 以找回这些被“遗漏”的微生物。目前生态环境中能培养的微生物种类较为有限, 但是通过培养方法的改进, 分离培养新的微生物或富集培养特殊功能的微生物依然是扩展微生物种类认知范围的重要途径。而且, 通过元基因组数据库分析, 可以了解常用的“通用”引物所不能覆盖的微生物范围, 并能阐明不同生态环境中各种微生物类型的分布情况。由于元转录组中最多的是核糖体RNA, 所以可通过改进的元转录组方法同时分析有活性的细菌、古生菌和真核微生物群落结构。追寻被“遗漏”的微生物不仅能扩展我们对微生物的认知范围, 同时也是研究并正确理解全球物质循环过程的一个重要领域。

Abstract:

The knowledge of microorganisms in ecological environments is already reached to the level of metabolic process study of microbial community with omics methods from the isolation dependent study. However, the normally used microbial community analysis method which is based on PCR amplification with “universal” primers would cause the “miss” of various microorganisms. Therefore, we need to seek some methods to find the “missed” microorganisms. Although there are critical limitations in cultivation of microorganisms, the modification of cultivation method to isolate novel types of microorganisms or enrich special functional microorganisms is still a useful method to increase the boundary of our knowledge. Based on the metagenome databases, we can analyze the coverage of “universal” primers and can also analyze the global patterns of different functional microorganisms. Because of high content of ribosomal RNA, modified metatranscriptome analysis will become a useful method for the simultaneous determination of active bacteria, archaea and microeukaryotes. Seeking “missed” microorganisms is an important research field to extend our knowledge about microorganisms and correctly understand different earth element cycles.