High throughput sequencing provides exact genomic locations of inducible prophages and accurate phage-to-host ratios in gut microbial strains.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Temperate phages influence the density, diversity and function of bacterial populations. Historically, they have been described as carriers of toxins. More recently, they have also been recognised as direct modulators of the gut microbiome, and indirectly of host health and disease. Despite recent advances in studying prophages using non-targeted sequencing approaches, methodological challenges in identifying inducible prophages in bacterial genomes and quantifying their activity have limited our understanding of prophage-host interactions.

Results

We present methods for using high-throughput sequencing data to locate inducible prophages, including those previously undiscovered, to quantify prophage activity and to investigate their replication. We first used the

SUBMITTER: Zund M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8008629 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature