In most animals, digestive tracts harbor the greatest number of bacteria in the animal that contribute to its health: by aiding in the digestion of nutrients, provisioning essential nutrients and protecting against colonization by pathogens. Invertebrates have been used to enhance our understanding of metabolic processes and microbe-host interactions owing to experimental advantages. This review describes how advances in DNA sequencing technologies have dramatically altered how researchers investigate microbe-host interactions, including 16S rRNA gene surveys, metagenome experiments, and metatranscriptome studies. Advantages and challenges of each of these approaches are described herein. Hypotheses generated through omics studies can be directly tested using site-directed mutagenesis, and findings from transposon studies and site-directed experiments are presented. Finally, unique structural aspects of invertebrate digestive tracts that contribute to symbiont specificity are presented. The combination of omics approaches with genetics and microscopy allows researchers to move beyond correlations to identify conserved mechanisms of microbe-host interactions.

中文翻译：

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细菌和无脊椎动物之间消化道共生的教训

在大多数动物中，消化道内藏着对动物有益的细菌数量最多：通过帮助营养物质的消化，提供必需的营养物质和防止病原体定殖而实现。由于实验上的优势，无脊椎动物已被用于增强我们对代谢过程和微生物-宿主相互作用的理解。这篇综述描述了DNA测序技术的进步如何极大地改变了研究人员研究微生物与宿主相互作用的方式，包括16S rRNA基因调查，元基因组实验和元转录组研究。本文描述了每种方法的优点和挑战。可以通过定点诱变直接测试通过组学研究产生的假设，并介绍了转座子研究和定点实验的发现。最后，提出了有助于共生体特异性的无脊椎动物消化道的独特结构方面。组学方法与遗传学和显微技术的结合，使研究人员可以超越相关性来确定微生物与宿主之间相互作用的保守机制。