A major biological challenge in the postgenomic era has been untangling the composition and functions of microbes that inhabit complex communities or microbiomes. Multi-omics and modern bioinformatics have provided the tools to assay molecules across different cellular and community scales; however, mechanistic knowledge over microbial interactions often remains elusive. This is due to the immense diversity and the essentially undiminished volume of not-yet-cultured microbes. Simplified model communities hold some promise in enabling researchers to manage complexity so that they can mechanistically understand the emergent properties of microbial community interactions. In this review, we surveyed several approaches that have effectively used tractable model consortia to elucidate the complex behavior of microbial communities. We go further to provide some perspectives on the limitations and new opportunities with these approaches and highlight where these efforts are likely to lead as advances are made in molecular ecology and systems biology.

中文翻译：

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将微生物群落建模作为理解复杂微生物群落的工具


后基因组时代的一个主要生物学挑战是解开居住在复杂群落或微生物组中的微生物的组成和功能。多组学和现代生物信息学提供了分析不同细胞和群落规模分子的工具；然而，关于微生物相互作用的机械知识往往仍然难以捉摸。这是由于尚未培养的微生物的巨大多样性和数量基本上没有减少。简化的群落模型有望使研究人员能够管理复杂性，以便他们能够机械地理解微生物群落相互作用的新兴特性。在这篇综述中，我们调查了几种有效使用易处理模型联合体来阐明微生物群落复杂行为的方法。我们进一步就这些方法的局限性和新机遇提供一些观点，并强调随着分子生态学和系统生物学的进步，这些努力可能会带来什么结果。