There has been an explosion of metagenomic data representing human, animal, and environmental microbiomes. This provides an unprecedented opportunity for comparative and longitudinal studies of many functional aspects of the microbiome that go beyond taxonomic classification, such as profiling genetic determinants of antimicrobial resistance, interactions with the host, potentially clinically relevant functions, and the role of mobile genetic elements (MGEs). One of the most important but least studied of these aspects are the MGEs, collectively referred to as the 'mobilome'. Here we elaborate on the benefits and limitations of using different metagenomic protocols, discuss the relative merits of various sequencing technologies, and highlight relevant bioinformatics tools and pipelines to predict the presence of MGEs and their microbial hosts.

代表人类、动物和环境微生物组的宏基因组数据呈爆炸式增长。这为微生物组的许多超越分类学分类的功能方面的比较和纵向研究提供了前所未有的机会，例如分析抗菌素耐药性的遗传决定因素、与宿主的相互作用、潜在的临床相关功能以及移动遗传元件的作用。 MGE)。这些方面中最重要但研究最少的一个是 MGE，统称为“移动组”。在这里，我们详细阐述了使用不同宏基因组方案的好处和局限性，讨论了各种测序技术的相对优点，