连续流生物反应器技术在微生物培养中的应用

Application of continuous flow bioreactor technology in microbial cultivation

摘要:

自然环境中99%微生物在实验室条件下仍是不能被培养的，称之为“未培养”微生物或微生物“暗物质”。对其进行研究不仅有助于认识环境中微生物代谢多样性，丰富生命之树，同时未培养微生物还蕴含着巨大的新基因和新天然产物资源。但传统培养技术的局限性阻碍了“未培养”微生物资源的开发和利用。虽然随着分子生物学技术的发展，可以直接从环境中获得未培养微生物的遗传信息，分析微生物的广泛代谢多样性，但微生物的生理特征和代谢产物等分析仍然需要建立在研究纯菌株的基础上。目前，已经有很多新颖的培养技术被研发，如原位培养技术、共培养技术和连续流生物反应器培养技术等用于挖掘未培养微生物资源。本文主要介绍了连续流生物反应器培养新技术的发展与改进，探讨了“未培养”微生物培养技术及设备的发展方向，以进一步促进“未培养”微生物资源的开发与利用。

Abstract:

Ninty nine percentage of microorganisms in the environment remains uncultured, called “uncultured” microorganisms or microbial “dark matter”. Unraveling the mysteries of these microbial “dark matter” is especially helpful to understand the diversity of microbes and their metabolic characteristics. DNA genome sequences of microbial “dark matter” could be recovered from the environment samples by population binning of metagenomics and single-cell genomics, independently or combined synergistically. However, microbial functions often cannot be deduced from genetic information alone, and the isolation of uncultured microorganisms remains a powerful approach. Many cultivation-based methods for culturing microorganisms have been developed, such as in situ cultivation, co-culture and continuous flow bioreactor. In this mini-review, we briefly introduce the development of new culture-dependent technology of continuous flow bioreactor and indicate the future research opportunities in this area.