Artificially selecting microbial communities: If we can breed dogs, why not microbiomes?
Artificially selecting microbial communities: If we can breed dogs, why not microbiomes?
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DOI：
10.1371/journal.pbio.3000356
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发表时间：
2019-08-01
期刊：
影响因子：
9.8
通讯作者：
Mitri, Sara
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Arias-Sanchez, Flor, I;Vessman, Bjorn;Mitri, Sara
天然微生物群落发挥着许多对人类健康至关重要的功能。然而，我们几乎无法控制它们，我们也不知道如何优化它们的功能。一个想法是培育微生物群落，就像我们培育狗一样：通过比较一组微生物群落，让表现最好的微生物产生新的群落，以此类推。虽然这个想法看起来很简单，但设计这样一个选择实验会带来许多令人惊讶的结果。谢和同事开发了一个计算模型，揭示了这种复杂性，并展示了不同的实验设计决策如何影响这样一个实验的成功。
Natural microbial communities perform many functions that are crucial for human wellbeing. Yet we have very little control over them, and we do not know how to optimize their functioning. One idea is to breed microbial communities as we breed dogs: by comparing a set of microbiomes and allowing the best-performing ones to generate new communities, and so on. Although this idea seems simple, designing such a selection experiment brings with it many decisions with surprising outcomes. Xie and colleagues developed a computational model that reveals this complexity and shows how different experimental design decisions can impact the success of such an experiment.