SummaryThe plant microbiota research field has rapidly shifted from efforts aimed at gaining a descriptive understanding of microbiota composition to a focus on acquiring mechanistic insights into microbiota functions and assembly rules. This evolution was driven by our ability to establish comprehensive collections of plant‐associated microbes and to reconstruct meaningful microbial synthetic communities (SynComs). We argue that this powerful deconstruction–reconstruction strategy can be used to reconstitute increasingly complex synthetic ecosystems (SynEcos) and mechanistically understand high‐level biological organization. The transitioning from simple to more advanced, fully tractable and programmable gnotobiotic SynEcos is ongoing and aims at rationally simplifying natural ecosystems by engineering them. Such reconstitution ecology approaches represent an untapped strategy for bridging the gap between ecology and functional biology and for unraveling plant–microbiota–environment mechanisms that modulate ecosystem health, assembly, and functioning.

中文翻译：

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从合成群落到合成生态系统：探索植物-微生物-环境相互作用的因果关系


摘要植物微生物群研究领域已迅速从旨在获得对微生物群组成的描述性理解的努力转变为专注于获得对微生物群功能和组装规则的机制见解。这种演变是由我们建立植物相关微生物的全面集合和重建有意义的微生物合成群落 （SynComs） 的能力推动的。我们认为，这种强大的解构-重建策略可用于重建日益复杂的合成生态系统 （SynEcos），并在机制上理解高级生物组织。从简单到更先进、完全可处理和可编程的 gnotobiotic SynEcos 的过渡正在进行中，旨在通过设计自然生态系统来合理简化它们。这种重构生态学方法代表了一种尚未开发的策略，用于弥合生态学和功能生物学之间的差距，并解开调节生态系统健康、组装和功能的植物-微生物群-环境机制。