The Phageome’s Role in Health and Disease

Описание: Where there are bacteria, there are bacteriophages, or viruses that infect bacteria. Given our bodies are packed with bacteria, it comes as no surprise that they are loaded with phages too. In fact, 1 uL of saliva has roughly 100,000 phages whereas 1 gram of feces has over 1 billion—indicating the gut is particularly loaded.
But what are all of these phages doing? Do they matter for our health? The answer appears to be yes, as scientists increasingly uncover associations between the so-called phageome and disease.
For example, research has revealed that the phageome of patients with inflammatory bowel disease, or IBD—a set of conditions characterized by chronic intestinal inflammation—is different from people without IBD, exhibiting a reduced richness and broad depletion of the phage community.
Other diseases have been associated with an altered gut phageome, too, including colorectal cancer, type 2 diabetes and metabolic disorders. Research has even shown that the gut phageome impacts cognition and memory through the gut-brain axis.
Of course, phages are not just in the gut but all over the body, and are also abundant in animals, plants and the environment at large, representing an important, if underexplored, facet of planetary health. For instance, there are loads of phages in the ocean, which kill marine bacteria to release nutrients and organic matter into the surrounding water and can help control algal blooms.
Ultimately, while studying the phageome can be tricky, as analytical tools continue to advance, so will our insights into the phageome and all its mysteries.

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