The Secret Life of Gut Viruses: Bacteriophages and Their Hidden Roles 

This detailed exploration highlights the fascinating and largely uncharted world of bacteriophages—viruses that coexist with bacteria in our gut. Despite being the most abundant biological entities on Earth, phages within the human gut microbiome remain enigmatic, with only a fraction of their diversity and function understood.

Here’s a summary of key points: 

  1. Phages: Hidden Guardians or Troublemakers? While traditionally studied for their ability to fight harmful bacteria, phages in the gut also target harmless commensal bacteria, influencing the microbiome’s structure and health. 
  2. Challenges in Phage Research. Culturing phages and their bacterial hosts remains labour-intensive and technically difficult, limiting discovery. Advances in sequencing and culturing have revealed some insights but much remains unknown, particularly for single-stranded DNA and RNA phages.
  3. Phages and Human Health. Distinct phage populations are linked to conditions like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and other gut-related disorders.
  4. Therapeutic Potential. Phages are being explored as therapies, including enhancing probiotic effectiveness and developing targeted treatments for diseases like Clostridium difficile infections and diabetes. 

By delving deeper into the biology of phages, researchers aim to unlock their therapeutic potential, offering new avenues for combating diseases and promoting gut health. 

This Nature Outlook on The human microbiome was published with financial support from Yakult.
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Nature Outlooks are supplements published in the Nature journal, focused on a topical area of research, and written by our top science journalists.

Every Nature Outlook is supported by an organization —enabling the sponsor organization to communicate to influential researchers and policy-makers their contribution to the subject area and the potential opportunities that lay ahead.

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