Establishment of a highly effective large-scale germ?free animal efficiency research and application system in China / 中国实验动物学报

ABSTRACT

Germ-free animals and metagenomic technology are the two major wheels for the study of microbiome in human health. Without a transplantation model of germ?free animals inoculated with microbiota (bacterial strains), it is impossible to establish the causal relationship between microbiota and diseases. Without germ?free animals, there will be no rapid development of research on the relationship between microbiota and human diseases today and tomorrow. Application of germ?free animals has formed four kinds of general research models, including comparison of conventional and germ?free animals, bacteria ( strain) transplantation with germ?free animals, rederivation of germ?free genetic engineering animals, and development of germ?free animals. Standardization of research mode will increase the scale and speed of application of germ?free animals. After ten years of efforts, Professor Wei Hong' s group has built the largest scale, the most stable tech?nical system, most widely used platform of germ?free animal in our country, which have provided a strong support in our country for scientific problem solving in the fields including animal husbandry, biomedicine, and food microbiology. At present, the germ?free animals are in small scale, low in efficiency, and the platform is separated from the application con?ditions. The basic theory and technical system of germ?free animals are still to be developed, and it is difficult to meet the growing demand for application. Establishment of an efficient large?scale research and application system of germ?free ani?mals will meet the needs of rapid development of microbiome research in China.