昆虫共生微生物资源获取与利用技术的研究

昆虫与微生物之间的共生关系是自然界中一种常见的互作形式。昆虫共生微生物不但在宿主生长发育、免疫调控和抑制病原体上发挥重要作用，同时也是亟待开发的资源宝库，具有潜在的临床、工业和环境应用价值。绝大多数的微生物尚未被分离培养；昆虫共生微生物本身较于其他环境微生物也有其特殊性，如样本的错综复杂和相对较低的生物量。这些因素限制了传统方法对昆虫共生微生物的获取及利用。因此需要不断拓展现有技术的适用范围，引进新的实验手段，多学科交叉，来推进昆虫共生微生物的深入研究及转化。鉴于此，本项目拟利用两种常用模式体系（鞘翅目昆虫赤拟谷盗及鳞翅目昆虫家蚕），引入新兴的培养组学，优化基于测序的鸟枪法宏基因组学，来研究适用昆虫样本（如肠道、体表、组织）的微生物资源获取与利用关键技术。这些技术的研发将提高昆虫共生微生物培养的成功概率，加快功能的挖掘，为进一步探索其生物学意义以及在昆虫资源与保护上的潜在应用价值奠定基础。

The symbiotic relationship between insects and microorganisms is a common form of interaction in nature. Insect symbiotic microorganisms not only play an important role in host growth and development, immune regulation and pathogen inhibition, but also are treasure troves for the discovery of novel applications in medicine, industry and environment. Most microorganisms have not been isolated and cultured in the laboratory. Compared with other environmental microorganisms, insect symbiotic microorganisms have their own characteristics, such as the complexity of samples and relatively low biomass. These factors limit the traditional methods for the acquisition and utilization of insect symbiotic microorganisms. Therefore, it is necessary to expand the application scope of existing technologies and introduce new experimental tools and interdisciplinary approaches to promote the in-depth basic and transformation research of insect symbiotic microorganisms. In view of these scientific questions, by employing two commonly used model systems (Coleopteran Tribolium castaneum and Lepidoptera Bombyx mori), this project intends to introduce the emerging Culturomics and optimize the high-throughput sequencing based shotgun metagenomics to study the key technologies for the acquisition and utilization of microbial resources from insect samples such as gut, body surface and tissue. The development of these new approaches and concepts will greatly improve the chances of culturing insect microbial symbionts, accelerate the functional mining, and finally lay a foundation for further exploring their biological significance and potential applications in insect resources utilization and protection.