微生物分子生态学发展历史及研究现状

微生物群落多样性是微生物生态学和环境学研究的重点之一。分子生物学方法应用于微生物群落结构分析使得对环境样品中占大多数的不可培养微生物的研究成为了可能。由于功能上高度保守,序列上的不同位置具有不同的变异速率,核糖体RNA（rRNA）是目前在微生物分子生态学上最为有用以及应用最广泛的分子标记,通过rRNA序列比对,可以分析不同分类水平的系统发育关系。元基因组学研究方法通过对环境样品中的各种微生物群落的总的基因组进行分析,充分展示了环境微生物代谢途径,极大地扩展了对微生物的认识。快速发展的高通量测序极大地促进了各项微生物生态学技术的发展,带来了新的突破。

The development history and research progress of molecular microbial ecology

Microbial community diversity is an essential issue in both microbial ecology and environmental microbiology.The features and characteristics of uncultured microorganisms,also known as the majority population in environments,could be accomplished because of the introduction of molecular methods.Ribosomal RNA(rRNA) is the most widely used and useful molecular marker for molecular ecological researches,which is caused by its highly functional conservation and diverse mutation rates in different positions.Phylogenetic analysis at different taxonomic level could be done by the comparison of rRNA sequences.Metagenomic methods of environmental samples by the analysis of total genomes of microbial community fully display the environmental microbial metabolic pathway and greatly expand the understanding on microorganisms.The rapid development of next generation sequencing methods have greatly promoted the microbial ecological technologies and brought new breakthroughs.