The application of next-generation sequencing (NGS) to the study of whole genomes and transcriptomes is becoming commonplace in molecular biology and molecular medicine. Over the past decade, these technologies have become more accessible to the broader biological community as the cost of NGS has decreased significantly and the availability of ready-to-use library preparation kits and user-friendly bioinformatic tools has increased. Indeed, these technologies are starting to be deployed in the study of ecological systems and immune function and have already yielded new discoveries and insights. However, despite the power of these techniques, they remain underutilized by the ecological immunology (ecoimmunology) community. This is unfortunate because there are several key challenges faced by ecological immunologists that these technologies are particularly well suited to address: (1) to measure immune function in biologically meaningful ways, (2) to describe the complex relationship between immunology and other aspects of physiology in an ecological context, and (3) to relate ecoimmunology to disease ecology. Each of these three challenges confronting the ecoimmunology community is critical to understanding ecoimmunology, and each has been stymied by a lack of sufficient data to effectively tackle the questions at hand. Deploying NGS methods to tackle these challenges promises to revolutionize the field of ecoimmunology by facilitating the unbiased, broad-scale, and efficient discovery of novel immune genes and mechanisms; the quantification of variation in immune systems; the characterization of relevant physiological pathways; and the description of microbial communities.

中文翻译：

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下一代生态免疫学。

下一代测序（NGS）在整个基因组和转录组研究中的应用在分子生物学和分子医学中正变得司空见惯。在过去的十年中，随着NGS的成本显着降低以及现成的图书馆制备试剂盒和用户友好的生物信息工具的可用性增加，这些技术已为更广泛的生物界所采用。确实，这些技术已开始在生态系统和免疫功能研究中得到应用，并且已经产生了新的发现和见解。但是，尽管有这些技术的强大功能，但它们仍未被生态免疫学（生态免疫学）社区充分利用。这是不幸的，因为生态免疫学家面临着几个关键挑战，这些技术特别适合解决：（1）以生物学上有意义的方式测量免疫功能，（2）描述免疫学与生理学其他方面之间的复杂关系。 （3）将生态免疫学与疾病生态联系起来。生态免疫学界面临的这三个挑战中的每一个对于理解生态免疫学都是至关重要的，而每一个挑战都因缺乏足够的数据来有效解决眼前的问题而受阻。部署NGS方法来应对这些挑战有望通过促进无偏见，大规模和有效地发现新型免疫基因和机制，革新生态免疫学领域；免疫系统变异的量化；相关生理途径的表征；以及微生物群落的描述。