微生物生态学理论框架

微生物是生态系统的重要组成部分,直接或间接地参与所有的生态过程。微生物生态学是基于微生物群体的科学,利用微生物群体DNA/RNA等标志物,重点研究微生物群落构建、组成演变、多样性及其与环境的关系,在生态学理论的指导和反复模型拟合下由统计分析得出具有普遍意义的结论。其研究范围从基因尺度到全球尺度。分子生物学技术的发展,使人们可以直接从基因水平上考查其多样性,从而使得对微生物空间分布格局及其成因的深入研究成为可能。进而可以从方法学探讨微生物生物多样性、分布格局、影响机制及其对全球变化的响应等。在微生物生态学研究中,群落构建与演化、分布特征(含植物-微生物相互关系)、执行群体功能的机理(生物地球化学循环等)、对环境变化的响应与反馈机理是今后需要关注的重点领域。概述了微生物生态学的概念,并初步提出其理论框架,在对比宏观生态学基础理论和模型的基础上,分析微生物多样性的研究内容、研究方法和群落构建的理论机制,展望了今后研究的重点领域。     

从微生物组到合成功能菌群

微生物组是指特定微环境中的微生物群落及其组学,自然界中的生物过程几乎都是通过微生物组完成的。随着测序技术的发展和成本降低,微生物组已经成为微生物生态学研究的热点领域。继合成生物学之后,基于微生物组的合成功能菌群研究正在兴起,在人类健康、农业、工业和生态等领域都有广泛的应用前景。本文从微生物组到合成功能菌群的角度系统论述了其在不同领域的研究现状与发展趋势,为微生物组从理论研究到应用提供思路。     

土壤微生物群落构建理论与时空演变特征

土壤微生物作为陆地生态系统的重要组成部分,直接或间接地参与几乎所有的土壤生态过程,在物质循环、能量转换以及污染物降解等过程中都发挥着重要作用。对土壤微生物时空演变规律及其形成机制的研究,不仅是微生物演变和进化的基础科学问题,也是预测微生物及其所介导的生态功能对环境条件变化响应、适应和反馈的理论依据。讨论了土壤微生物群落的定义、测度方法和指标,认为群落是联系动植物宏观生态学与微生物生态学的基础,群落构建机制是宏观和微观生态学都需要研究的核心科学问题;从生态学的群落构建理论出发,阐述了包括生态位理论/中性理论、过程理论和多样性-稳定性理论在土壤微生物时空演变研究中的应用,以及微生物群落在时间和空间上的分布特征及其尺度效应;确立了以微生物群落构建理论为基础、不同时空尺度下土壤微生物群落演变特征为主要内容的微生物演变研究的基本框架。     

动物胃肠道微生太理论与实践

重点论述了动物胃肠道内与微生物群落密切相关的微生态学理论,介绍了动物胃肠道微生物群落的种类、特点和作用及其机制,并着重阐述了动物胃肠道微生太学理论与饲用微生物添加剂的关系及其微生物添加剂在畜牧业生产中的实际应用效果。     

合成功能菌群的构建及其工程化应用

自然界中存在着大量的天然微生物群落,不同种群的微生物通过通信及分工拓展了单菌的性能边界,降低了整体的代谢负担并增加了对环境的适应性。合成生物学依据工程设计原理构建或改造基本功能元件、基因线路和底盘细胞,从而对生命的运行过程进行具有目的性的重新编程,获得丰富及可控的生物学功能。将这种工程设计的原理引入菌群,获得结构明确及功能可调的合成群落,可以为合成功能菌群的理论研究到应用提供思路及方法。本文回顾了近年来合成功能菌群领域的相关工作,对合成功能菌群的设计原则、构建方法以及应用进行详细介绍,并对未来的发展进行了展望。     

合成微生物群落用于木质纤维素生物质转化的研究进展

木质纤维素在自然界中的储量可观,是生物燃料生产的重要来源。联合生物加工(consolidated bioprocessing)指在不添加酶的情况下,将木质纤维素“一步”转化为生物燃料的过程,在能源危机日益严重的今天具有重要的应用价值。合成微生物群落(synthetic microbial consortia)是由两种或多种纯培养微生物(野生菌株或工程菌株)共同培养而形成的菌群,具有复杂性低、稳定性高等优点,通过协调微生物之间的相互作用以及整个生态系统的稳定,从而实现特定的功能。近年来,合成生物学的快速发展有利于开发新的方法和工具用于合成微生物群落的构建及优化,促进其在联合生物加工方面的应用。本文聚焦于木质纤维素的联合生物加工,综述了合成微生物群落在该领域的研究进展。简单介绍了系统生物学为合成微生物群落的设计提供指导,详细介绍了合成微生物群落的设计原则、优化工具和在实际生产中的应用与挑战,为木质纤维素的联合生物加工提供借鉴意义。     

催化元件和途径的人工设计与组装

催化元件以及由多个催化元件组成的合成途径的设计与组装为人工合成体系的建立奠定了基础,是合成生物学的重要研究内容。除从自然生物中挖掘大量的天然酶和途径可供人工合成体系使用外,将计算生物学、蛋白质工程以及组合生物合成等技术相结合,理性地、有目的地进行催化元件和途径的人工设计与组装,将提供新功能酶以及新物质合成途径。介绍了催化元件和合成途径人工设计与组装的研究策略和最新进展。     

微生物生态学中分子生物学方法及T-RFLP技术研究

根据微生物基因 (DNA)多态性来研究微生物的多样性 ,是建立在多聚酶链式反应 (PCR)基础之上分子生物学的新方法 ,克服了传统微生物培养方法的限制。从理论、实验及应用角度出发 ,介绍了几种在微生物生态学中应用较为广泛的分子生物学技术 ;详细阐述了微生物生态学中分子生物学的一种新研究方法---末端限制性片段长度多态性 (T -RFLP)技术 ,该技术作为一种研究微生物群落特征的理想方法已经越来越受到人们的重视。     

磷脂脂肪酸分析方法在微生物生态学中的应用

磷脂脂肪酸分析方法(PLFA)是基于生物化学手段的一种微生物生态学研究新技术,它具有对细胞生理活性没有特殊的要求,对样品保存时间也要求不高等优点,由样品中所有微生物提供信息,是一种快捷、可靠的分析方法。本文介绍了PLFA在微生物生态学研究中的应用,主要包括对微生物群落生物量、群落结构和功能及其变化,指示特定微生物以及营养状况方面的研究。     

实时荧光定量PCR及其在微生物生态学中的应用

定量描述微生物群落的组成,在微生物生态学的许多研究领域都是非常重要的。然而由于可培养技术的局限性,定量描述微生物群落成为比较困难的事情。最近包括PCR技术在内的分子生物学技术为人们提供了有力的工具,使对微生物群落的分布、丰度等有了进一步的了解。实时荧光定量PCR技术作为核酸定量检测技术,自从发明以来在微生物生态学研究中逐渐得到了广泛的应用。从微生物生态学角度,综述了实时荧光定量PCR技术的原理、发展、优缺点及其在微生物生态学研究中的应用与研究进展,并探讨了实时荧光定量PCR技术的发展和应用前景。     

Puncture mechanics of cnidarian cnidocysts: a natural actuator

Background  

Microbial communities are involved in many processes relevant to industrial and medical biotechnology, such as the formation of biofilms, lignocellulosic degradation, and hydrogen production. The manipulation of synthetic and natural microbial communities and their underlying ecological parameters, such as fitness, evolvability, and variation, is an increasingly important area of research for synthetic biology.     

Opportunities for yeast metabolic engineering: Lessons from synthetic biology

Constant progress in genetic engineering has given rise to a number of promising areas of research that facilitated the expansion of industrial biotechnology. The field of metabolic engineering, which utilizes genetic tools to manipulate microbial metabolism to enhance the production of compounds of interest, has had a particularly strong impact by providing new platforms for chemical production. Recent developments in synthetic biology promise to expand the metabolic engineering toolbox further by creating novel biological components for pathway design. The present review addresses some of the recent advances in synthetic biology and how these have the potential to affect metabolic engineering in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. While S. cerevisiae for years has been a robust industrial organism and the target of multiple metabolic engineering trials, its potential for synthetic biology has remained relatively unexplored and further research in this field could strongly contribute to industrial biotechnology. This review also addresses are general considerations for pathway design, ranging from individual components to regulatory systems, overall pathway considerations and whole-organism engineering, with an emphasis on potential contributions of synthetic biology to these areas. Some examples of applications for yeast synthetic biology and metabolic engineering are also discussed.     

Identifying Keystone Species in the Human Gut Microbiome from Metagenomic Timeseries Using Sparse Linear Regression

Human associated microbial communities exert tremendous influence over human health and disease. With modern metagenomic sequencing methods it is now possible to follow the relative abundance of microbes in a community over time. These microbial communities exhibit rich ecological dynamics and an important goal of microbial ecology is to infer the ecological interactions between species directly from sequence data. Any algorithm for inferring ecological interactions must overcome three major obstacles: 1) a correlation between the abundances of two species does not imply that those species are interacting, 2) the sum constraint on the relative abundances obtained from metagenomic studies makes it difficult to infer the parameters in timeseries models, and 3) errors due to experimental uncertainty, or mis-assignment of sequencing reads into operational taxonomic units, bias inferences of species interactions due to a statistical problem called “errors-in-variables”. Here we introduce an approach, Learning Interactions from MIcrobial Time Series (LIMITS), that overcomes these obstacles. LIMITS uses sparse linear regression with boostrap aggregation to infer a discrete-time Lotka-Volterra model for microbial dynamics. We tested LIMITS on synthetic data and showed that it could reliably infer the topology of the inter-species ecological interactions. We then used LIMITS to characterize the species interactions in the gut microbiomes of two individuals and found that the interaction networks varied significantly between individuals. Furthermore, we found that the interaction networks of the two individuals are dominated by distinct “keystone species”, Bacteroides fragilis and Bacteroided stercosis, that have a disproportionate influence on the structure of the gut microbiome even though they are only found in moderate abundance. Based on our results, we hypothesize that the abundances of certain keystone species may be responsible for individuality in the human gut microbiome.     

合成生物学改造微生物及生物被膜用于重金属污染检测与修复

随着工业化进程不断加快,重金属污染日益加剧,尤其是水体的重金属污染,已严重威胁人类健康,迫切需要进行有效的污染修复。相比传统物理和化学修复,生物修复具有绿色环保和可持续性的特点。因为微生物生长繁殖迅速、生物被膜具有动态可调节和环境适应性好等特点,使其能更好耐受胁迫环境,在环境修复中有重要作用。合成生物学改造微生物及生物被膜用于环境污染生物修复近年兴起,成为未来重要的发展方向。主要概述了重金属污染的微生物修复机理和方法,结合可编程微生物被膜的最新研究成果,重点介绍了合成生物学改造微生物及生物被膜的分类与功能应用,以及在重金属铅、汞和镉等污染修复中的研究进展,讨论了重金属污染生物修复的发展方向。     

Programming microbial population dynamics by engineered cell-cell communication

A major aim of synthetic biology is to program novel cellular behavior using engineered gene circuits. Early endeavors focused on building simple circuits that fulfill simple functions, such as logic gates, bistable toggle switches, and oscillators. These gene circuits have primarily focused on single-cell behaviors since they operate intracellularly. Thus, they are often susceptible to cell-cell variations due to stochastic gene expression. Cell-cell communication offers an efficient strategy to coordinate cellular behavior at the population level. To this end, we review recent advances in engineering cell-cell communication to achieve reliable population dynamics, spanning from communication within single species to multispecies, from one-way sender-receiver communication to two-way communication in synthetic microbial ecosystems. These engineered systems serve as well-defined model systems to better understand design principles of their naturally occurring counterparts and to facilitate novel biotechnology applications.     

微生物分子生态学技术在污水处理系统中的应用

微生物分子生态学作为分子生物学与微生物生态学交叉而形成的学科,在污水处理方面广泛应用。本文从分子生态学实验技术角度,综述了目前污水处理系统中微生物群体结构、多样性及其与功能相关性的研究进展,探讨了分子生态学技术的发展与应用前景,并指出研究该体系微生物对于认识微生物系统发育地位具有重要意义。     

羊毛硫肽的高通量工程改造方法新进展

羊毛硫肽(lanthipeptide)是由核糖体合成并经翻译后修饰产生的肽类天然产物,具有丰富的分子结构和多样的生物活性。新型羊毛硫肽是活性药物的重要来源,可以通过基因组挖掘和工程改造获得。羊毛硫肽前体肽由基因编码,同时其合成酶具有较高的底物杂泛性。基于这些特征,可以对羊毛硫肽的生物合成过程开展高通量工程改造,从而快速获得新的羊毛硫肽衍生物。综述了近些年高通量构建和筛选羊毛硫肽衍生物的新方法:介绍了非天然氨基酸引入、组合式生物合成、嵌合前导肽等文库构建技术;讨论了细胞表面展示、反向双杂交、细胞自裂解、无细胞(cell-free)体系等方法在结构与活性筛选中的应用;对基于自动化合成生物技术开展羊毛硫肽的规模化工程改造进行了展望。     

OptCom: a multi-level optimization framework for the metabolic modeling and analysis of microbial communities

Microorganisms rarely live isolated in their natural environments but rather function in consolidated and socializing communities. Despite the growing availability of high-throughput sequencing and metagenomic data, we still know very little about the metabolic contributions of individual microbial players within an ecological niche and the extent and directionality of interactions among them. This calls for development of efficient modeling frameworks to shed light on less understood aspects of metabolism in microbial communities. Here, we introduce OptCom, a comprehensive flux balance analysis framework for microbial communities, which relies on a multi-level and multi-objective optimization formulation to properly describe trade-offs between individual vs. community level fitness criteria. In contrast to earlier approaches that rely on a single objective function, here, we consider species-level fitness criteria for the inner problems while relying on community-level objective maximization for the outer problem. OptCom is general enough to capture any type of interactions (positive, negative or combinations thereof) and is capable of accommodating any number of microbial species (or guilds) involved. We applied OptCom to quantify the syntrophic association in a well-characterized two-species microbial system, assess the level of sub-optimal growth in phototrophic microbial mats, and elucidate the extent and direction of inter-species metabolite and electron transfer in a model microbial community. We also used OptCom to examine addition of a new member to an existing community. Our study demonstrates the importance of trade-offs between species- and community-level fitness driving forces and lays the foundation for metabolic-driven analysis of various types of interactions in multi-species microbial systems using genome-scale metabolic models.