What Lies Beneath? Taking the Plunge into the Murky Waters of Phage Biology.

ABSTRACT: The sequence revolution revealed that bacteria-infecting viruses, known as phages, are Earth's most abundant biological entities. Phages have far-reaching impacts on the form and function of microbial communities and play a fundamental role in ecological processes. However, even well into the sequencing revolution, we have only just begun to explore the murky waters around the phage biology iceberg. Many viral reads cannot be assigned to a culturable isolate, and reference databases are biased toward more easily collectible samples, which likely distorts our conclusions. This minireview points out alternatives to mapping reads to reference databases and highlights innovative bioinformatic and experimental approaches that can help us overcome some of the challenges in phage research and bet

SUBMITTER: Zund M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9948730 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature