What is (not) known about the dynamics of the human gut virome in health and disease

Abstract

The human gut virome has an important role in human health but its dynamics remain poorly understood. Few longitudinal studies in healthy adults showed a stable temporal gut virome, with high inter-individual diversity. In contrast, the infant virome shows a high temporal intra-individual diversity. Unfortunately, these virome studies ignore an enormous amount of unknown 'dark matter' sequences, leading to incomplete analyses and possibly incorrect conclusions. Also, the interactions between prokaryotes and bacteriophages in the gut seem to be too complex for currently available models. Therefore, there is a huge need of larger longitudinal cohort studies focusing on both the bacterial and viral component of the microbiome to be able to describe and understand this complex ecosystem.