The epidemic of coronavirus has set the world on viruses as there is no time in living memory, but new evidence shows that humans do not even notice the extent of survival – even when indoors. us.
A new database project compiled by scientists has identified more than 140,000 viral species living in human gut – a large catalog that is all the more remarkable because more than half of these viruses were unknown. on previous science.
If tens of thousands of recently discovered viruses look like a scary development, that is completely understandable. But we should not misinterpret what these viruses within us represent, researchers say.
“It is important to remember that not all viruses are harmful, but that they represent an essential part of the gut ecosystem,” explained biochemist Alexandre Almeida of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s Institute of Bioinformatics (EMBL). -EBI) and Wellcome Sanger Institute.
“These samples came mainly from healthy people who didn’t have certain diseases.”
The new virus catalog – known as the Gut Phage Database (GPD) – was accomplished by analyzing more than 28,000 individual metagenomes – publicly available records of DNA classification of gut mosquito samples. collected from 28 countries – along with nearly 2,900 reference genomes of cultured gut bacteria.
The results revealed 142,809 viral species that live in human gut, making up a specific type of virus called bacteriophage, which infects bacteria, as well as single-celled organisms called archaea.
In the secret environment of the gut microbiome – which contains a diverse mix of microscopic organisms, including both bacteria and viruses – bacteriophages are thought to play an important role in regulating the both bacteria and the health of the human gut itself.
“Bacter Bacteriophages significantly affect microphone communities by acting as horizontal gene transfer vectors, encoding accessory functions beneficial to bacterial species, and promoting dynamic co-evolutionary interactions,” the researchers write in their new paper.
For a long time, our knowledge of this phenomenon was hampered by limitations in our understanding of bacteriophage species.
In recent years, new advances in metagenomic analysis have greatly expanded our awareness of the viral variability we are experiencing here – and perhaps nothing more than the Gut Phage Database , which the researchers describe as “a major extension of human gut bacteriophage diversity. “.
“To our knowledge, this set represents the most complete and complete collection of human phage genomes to date,” the study’s authors write.
“Having a complete database of high-quality phage genomes paves the way for much analysis of the human gut virome at a highly developed resolution, allowing specific viral cleavages to connect to specific microbiome phenotypes. “
Already, the database is updating what we know about viral behavior.
The research shows that more than a third (36 percent) of identified viral strains are restricted to the introduction of a single species of bacteria, which means they can block gene flow networks formed across phylogenetically specific bacterial species.
In addition, the researchers found 280 viral spreads spread across the globe, including one newly identified shoreline, called Gubaphage, which appears to be the second cover virus most common in human gut, following what is known as the crAssphage group.
Because there are some similarities between the two, the researchers initially thought the Gubaphage may have belonged to a prospective family of crAssphage-like viruses, before the burrows were determined to be unique.
There is still so much to learn, and not just on the Gubaphage – but about more viruses than we ever wanted to dream. Thanks to research efforts like this, however, the findings of tomorrow are closer, and new perspectives will emerge more quickly.
“Bacteriophage research is currently undergoing resuscitation,” says microbiologist Trevor Lawley of the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
“This large, high-quality catalog of human gut viruses is coming at just the right time to be a plan for leading ecological and evolutionary research in future virome studies.”
The results are reported in Cell.