There is an increasing need to investigate microbiomes in their entirety in a variety of contexts ranging from environmental to human health scenarios. This requirement is becoming increasingly important with the emergence of antibiotic resistance. In general, more conventional approaches are too expensive and/or time-consuming and often predicated on prior knowledge of the microorganisms one wishes to study. Herein, we propose the use of biospectroscopy tools as relatively high-throughput, non-destructive approaches to profile microbiomes under study. Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) or Raman spectroscopy both generate fingerprint spectra of biological material and such spectra can readily be subsequently classed according to biochemical changes in the microbiota, such as emergence of antibiotic resistance. FTIR spectroscopy techniques generally can only be applied to desiccated material whereas Raman approaches can be applied to more hydrated samples. The ability to readily fingerprint microbiomes could lend itself to new approaches in determining microbial behaviours and emergence of antibiotic resistance.

中文翻译：

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对微生物群进行指纹识别以筛选微生物抗生素抗性。

从环境到人类健康的各种情况下，越来越需要对微生物群进行整体研究。随着抗生素抗性的出现，这一要求变得越来越重要。通常，更常规的方法太昂贵和/或费时，并且常常基于人们希望研究的微生物的先验知识。在这里，我们建议使用生物光谱学工具作为相对高通量，非破坏性的方法来对正在研究的微生物组进行分析。傅里叶变换红外（FTIR）或拉曼光谱都生成生物材料的指纹图谱，并且可以根据微生物群中的生化变化（例如出现抗生素抗性）对其进行分类。FTIR光谱技术通常只能应用于干燥的材料，而拉曼方法可以应用于更水合的样品。易于指纹识别微生物群的能力可能使其适用于确定微生物行为和出现抗生素抗性的新方法。