英国惠康基因组校区惠康桑格研究所Trevor D. Lawley团队近日取得一项新成果。他们揭示人体肠道噬菌体多样性的大规模扩展。这一研究成果于2021年2月18日发表在国际顶尖学术期刊《细胞》杂志上。

他们介绍了肠道噬菌体数据库，该数据库包括约142,000个非冗余病毒基因组的集合，这些集合是通过挖掘28,060个全球分布的人类肠道元基因组和2,898个培养的肠道细菌参考基因组的数据集而获得的。寄主的研究表明，在扇形菌门中，病毒的多样性最高，约36％的病毒簇（VCs）不限于单个物种，从而在整个系统发生性不同的细菌物种之间建立了基因流网络。

流行病学分析发现，在至少5大洲发现了280个全球分布的VC，并发现了高度流行的噬菌体进化枝，其特征令人联想到p-crAssphage。这种高质量、大规模的噬菌体基因组目录将改善未来的病毒学研究，并使人类肠道噬菌体的生态和进化分析成为可能。

据了解，噬菌体通过建立促进生态适应的基因流网络来驱动细菌群落的进化变化。但是，病毒多样性的程度及其在人类肠道中的流行程度仍然未知。

附：英文原文

Title: Massive expansion of human gut bacteriophage diversity

Author: Luis F. Camarillo-Guerrero, Alexandre Almeida, Guillermo Rangel-Pineros, Robert D. Finn, Trevor D. Lawley

Issue&Volume: 2021/02/18

Abstract: Bacteriophages drive evolutionary change in bacterial communities by creating gene flow networks that fuel ecological adaptions. However, the extent of viral diversity and its prevalence in the human gut remains largely unknown. Here, we introduce the Gut Phage Database, a collection of ～142,000 non-redundant viral genomes (>10 kb) obtained by mining a dataset of 28,060 globally distributed human gut metagenomes and 2,898 reference genomes of cultured gut bacteria. Host assignment revealed that viral diversity is highest in the Firmicutes phyla and that ～36% of viral clusters (VCs) are not restricted to a single species, creating gene flow networks across phylogenetically distinct bacterial species. Epidemiological analysis uncovered 280 globally distributed VCs found in at least 5 continents and a highly prevalent phage clade with features reminiscent of p-crAssphage. This high-quality, large-scale catalog of phage genomes will improve future virome studies and enable ecological and evolutionary analysis of human gut bacteriophages.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2021.01.029

Source: cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)00072-6