近日，瑞士苏黎世联邦理工学院Shinichi Sunagawa及其团队提出了珊瑚微生物群落是未知基因组和生物合成多样性的储藏库。这一研究成果发表在2026年2月25日出版的国际学术期刊《自然》上。

该课题组人员分析了从太平洋32个岛屿的99个珊瑚礁收集的3个代表性珊瑚属的820个造礁珊瑚样本中重建的微生物基因组（Tara Pacific expedition）。通过将他们的分析与其他珊瑚礁物种的微生物组相结合，该课题组研究人员发现在塔拉太平洋样品中完全鉴定的4224种微生物物种中只有10%和645种物种中不到1%具有基因组信息。

此外，造礁珊瑚微生物群的生物合成潜力可与海绵等传统天然产品相媲美或超过。在珊瑚礁微生物群中富含生物合成的细菌中，研究小组发现了新的酸杆菌群，它们编码以前未知的酶学，从而为功能性蛋白质工程开辟了有希望的途径。总之，这项研究强调了保护珊瑚礁作为分子多样性的重要储存库的重要性。

据悉，珊瑚礁是海洋生物多样性的热点，提供了广泛的生态系统服务。它们是生物活性代谢物的储存库，许多是由与珊瑚礁无脊椎动物宿主相关的微生物产生的。然而，对于珊瑚礁的关键物种——造礁珊瑚，由于珊瑚礁生物多样性的惊人下降，课题组研究人员仍然缺乏对其微生物编码的生物合成潜力和受到威胁的分子资源的系统评估。

附：英文原文

Title: Coral microbiomes as reservoirs of unknown genomic and biosynthetic diversity

Author: Wiederkehr, Fabienne, Paoli, Lucas, Richter, Daniel, Racunica, Dora, Ruscheweyh, Hans-Joachim, Sperfeld, Martin, OBrien, James, Miravet-Verde, Samuel, Streiff, Alena B., Ransome, Jessica, Chepkirui, Clara, Priest, Taylor, Sintsova, Anna, Salazar, Guillem, Bistolas, Kalia S. I., Sawyer, Teresa, Labadie, Karine, Mayer, Kim-Isabelle, Perdereau, Aude, Reddy, Maggie M., Moulin, Clmentine, Boissin, Emilie, Bourdin, Guillaume, Cailliau, Juliette, Iwankow, Guillaume, Poulain, Julie, Romac, Sarah, Planes, Serge, Allemand, Denis, Agostini, Sylvain, Bowler, Chris, Douville, Eric, Forcioli, Didier, Galand, Pierre E., Lombard, Fabien, Oliveira, Pedro H., Thomas, Olivier P., Vega Thurber, Rebecca, Troubl, Romain, Voolstra, Christian R., Wincker, Patrick, Ziegler, Maren, Piel, Jrn, Sunagawa, Shinichi

Issue&Volume: 2026-02-25

Abstract: Coral reefs are marine biodiversity hotspots that provide a wide range of ecosystem services1. They are reservoirs of bioactive metabolites, many produced by microorganisms associated with reef invertebrate hosts2. However, for the keystone species of coral reefs—the reef-building corals—we still lack a systematic assessment of their microbially encoded biosynthetic potential and the molecular resources at stake due to the alarming decline in reef biodiversity. Here we analysed microbial genomes reconstructed from 820 reef-building coral samples of three representative coral genera collected at 99 reefs across 32 islands throughout the Pacific Ocean (Tara Pacific expedition)3. By contextualizing our analyses with the microbiomes of other reef species, we found that only 10% of the 4,224 microbial species and less than 1% of the 645 species exclusively identified in Tara Pacific samples had genomic information available. Furthermore, the biosynthetic potential of reef-building coral microbiomes rivalled or surpassed that of traditional natural product sources such as sponges. Among the biosynthetically rich bacteria in the reef microbiome, we identified new groups of Acidobacteriota that encode previously unknown enzymology, in turn opening promising avenues for functional protein engineering. Together, this study underscores the importance of conserving coral reefs as vital reservoirs of molecular diversity.

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10159-6

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10159-6