A 100 years plus of gnotobiology

摘要

The raw material of this article on gnotobiology is taken from my own lectures on this far from well-known animal science subject. I justify the phrase "far from well-known" by facts from my own personal experience. I know none other than myself who is involved in lecturing on gnotobiotics on a weekly basis for at least ten years in a well established academic institution. Invariably when I am asked even by fellow lecturers what I teach, their reaction to my mention of gnotobiology evokes mixed reactions varying from a bewildered "how interesting" accompanied by a hesitancy to enquire further lest it displays ignorance of a department of modern science, to an honest, "what on earth is that about?". Finally, in another scholastic setting in which I regularly and frequently find myself lecturing to qualified scientists, some brave soul, more inquisitive than the rest among the delegates, seeing the word 'gnotobiotes' on an overhead, will bravely ask, "What are they?". When I follow up this welcome question, in attempting to ascertain if any among, say a dozen or two dozen delegates who are research scientists intending to work with animals, have dealt with gnotobiotic animals, certainly over the last ten years (averaging two or three sessions everymonth), no more than two or three have admitted being involved with such animals. Are gnotobiologists the missing link in the advance of animal experimentation or is gnotobiotics merely a meticulous technology associated with the use and maintenance of isolators? Isolators, the essential equipment for the practice of gnotobiology, are certainly used in many other areas of both animal science and medicine. I myself worked for many years with athymic mice (nudes) in isolators. These small rodents were byno means gnotobiotes but were in containment conditions to protect their Specified Pathogen Free (SPF) health status from staff-borne staphylococci. My own first encounter with an isolator, back in the sixties of the last century, was a sad occasion farremoved from the arcane world of gnotobiology. It was unfortunately baptizing a badly deformed human neonate. I wish to make the point that work with, and use of, isolators is a much wider sphere of work in research than gnotobiotics per se. In this article I merely hope to draw the attention of the interested to some of the more important areas of gnotobiology. Better experts than I could expound on the learned science associated with gnotobiology and there are some past students of my own out there who have long surpassed their master in the advanced techniques associated with gnotobiotics.