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Bacteriophages have great potential in both medicine and biotechnology. Here the authors present PHEIGES, a cell-free method for phage genome engineering, synthesis and selection based on T7, which allows direct selection of engineered and mutant phages without compartmentalization.
Bacteriophage strain DS6A efficiently eradicates intracellular Mtb in human macrophages, while humanized mice treated with DS6A show improved pulmonary function and reduced Mtb load in mouse organs with greater efficacy in the spleen.
Bacterial capsules provide protection against the environment, including host immune systems. Authors swap capsule loci in Klebsiella pneumoniae to reveal the role of these sugar coats against plasmid conjugation and phage infection, showing that the serotype is a key player in regulating conjugation rates, and phage susceptibility.
Gut ecosystem colonization impacts lifelong health. Here, authors track mother-infant gut viruses over time, reveal feeding’s influence on early viral colonization, and demonstrate the co-transmission of bacteriophages and bacteria from mothers to infants.
Here, the authors present a metagenomic catalogue of the early-life human gut virome including 160,478 non-redundant DNA and RNA viral sequences from 8,130 gut virus-like particles enriched or bulk metagenomes in the first three years of life.
The role of viruses in environmental methane cycling is still largely unclear. Here, Zhong et al. analyse metagenomics data to identify auxiliary metabolic genes related to methane metabolism within viral contigs. They found that the potential viral impacts on methane production and oxidation varies by habitat.
We deeply characterized the early-life gut virome, which consists mainly of bacteriophages (phages) and the diversity of which greatly exceeds bacterial diversity. The virome was associated with later asthma development, independently of the bacterial hosts of the phages; we further uncovered intriguing interactions with immune genetics.
Two recent studies provide mechanistic understanding of how bacteria employ the Gabija system for defence against phages, as well as how phages use anti-defence proteins to overcome bacterial immunity.
In this Journal Club, Tao Zuo discusses a study by Gogokhia et al. who found that gut bacteriophages can alter mucosal immunity to impact mammalian health.