Strengthening Insights in Microbial Ecological Networks from Theory to Applications

Abstract

ABSTRACT Networks encode the interactions between the components in complex systems and play an essential role in understanding complex systems. Microbial ecological networks provide a system-level insight for comprehensively understanding complex microbial interactions, which play important roles in microbial community assembly. However, microbial ecological networks are in their infancy of both network inference and biological interpretation. In this perspective, we articulate the theory gaps and limitations in building and interpreting microbial ecological networks, emphasize developing tools for evaluating the predicted microbial interaction relationships, and predict the potential applications of microbial ecological networks in the long run.

Keywords

• evaluation
• inference
• interpretation
• microbial ecological network
• microbial interactions
• network science