ABSTRACT
Gut microbiota, composed of bacteria, archaea, fungi, and viruses, play crucial roles in the gut ecosystem and have been revealed to be highly related to human health and disease. Bacteriophages are viruses that infect bacteria and have been shown to dominate the majority of the gut virome, known as the phageome. Due to phage–bacteria interactions, the gut phageome plays dynamic roles in shaping the ecology of the surrounding bacterial community and thus extends significant impacts on gastrointestinal fitness. Specifically, phages in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract influence the composition and population of human gut microbiota and the overall human body. Several studies reported that the diversity and balance of the gut phageome are related to human health, and they also indicated that the imbalance of the phageome results in human diseases, such as ulcerative colitis and diabetes. The importance of phageome in the gut microbiota and clinical reports of phage applications also shed light and provide trends for phage-based therapy against human diseases. These include bacteriophage-based CRISPR gene editing of gut microbiota and fecal viral transplants. Despite significant progress in this field, much of the viral dark matter has remained unknown, and further research is required to fill the gap of phageome in gut microbiota.
