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Updated: Jun 17, 2025

Phage Phenomics: Physiological Approaches to Characterize Novel Viral Proteins
Published on: June 11, 2015
Long-read sequencing reveals extensive gut phageome structural variations driven by genetic exchange with bacterial
Senying Lai1,2,3, Huarui Wang4, Peer Bork5,6,7
1Department of Neurology, Zhongshan Hospital and Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
None:
Genetic variations are instrumental for unraveling phage evolution and deciphering their functional implications. Here, we explore the underlying fine-scale genetic variations in the gut phageome, especially structural variations (SVs). By using virome-enriched long-read metagenomic sequencing across 91 individuals, we identified a total of 14,438 nonredundant phage SVs and revealed their prevalence within the human gut phageome. These SVs are mainly enriched in genes involved in recombination, DNA methylation, and antibiotic resistance. Notably, a substantial fraction of phage SV sequences share close homology with bacterial fragments, with most SVs enriched for horizontal gene transfer (HGT) mechanism. Further investigations showed that these SV sequences were genetic exchanged between specific phage-bacteria pairs, particularly between phages and their respective bacterial hosts. Temperate phages exhibit a higher frequency of genetic exchange with bacterial chromosomes and then virulent phages. Collectively, our findings provide insights into the genetic landscape of the human gut phageome.
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