(LiveScience) – Scientists have identified more than 70,000 previously unknown viruses that live in the human gut and infect the bacteria that live there — but how they impact our bodies is a mystery.
The gut microbiome, or the community of microbes that we carry around in our digestive system, plays an important role in food digestion and regulating the immune system, Live Science previously reported. But many studies have also linked imbalances in gut microbes to conditions including liver disease, obesity, and allergies.
Yet shockingly little is known about the microbiome. Although the microbiome includes a variety of microorganisms — including bacteria and viruses — previous studies have focused mainly on gut bacteria because they are easier to detect.
In the new study, a group of researchers used a method called metagenomics to identify the viruses. This method involves analyzing all of the genetic material from a community of microbes together and then mapping the individual sequences found to specific species. They analyzed more than 28,000 gut microbiome samples taken from 28 countries.
This process revealed complete genomes for more than 140,000 species of viruses living in the human gut. (A single person, however, carries around only a fraction of these species.) Though many types of viruses live in the gut, they focused on viruses that can infect bacteria, called “bacteriophages” or “phages” for short. READ MORE
