Lectures and seminars The Karolinska Infection Biology Network open seminar: "If you don’t include the virome, you’re not really working on the microbiome"

Speaker

Professor Colin Hill from University College Cork, Ireland.

Date and Time

1 ST June 2023 at 13.00 

Venue

Cesar lecture hall 

Title

"If you don’t include the virome, you’re not really working on the microbiome"

Abstract

The virome is an integral part of the gut microbiome. There are almost as many bacteriophages in the gut as their bacterial partners. In longitudinal studies it has been shown that the virome is highly individual but also stable over time. Much of our information comes from metagenomic sequencing which has revealed an extraordinary diversity of bacteriophages, the vast majority of which have never been cultured in a laboratory. But, what role do they play in the structure, resilience and functionality of the gut microbiome? The traditional view is that bacteriophages drive population structure by killing sensitive hosts and selecting for resistant hosts. But, it is becoming increasingly evident the bacteriophages may also play a role in the functionality of the bacteriome, in horizontal gene transfer, and in community resilience to insult. I will present a number of examples from our work on the gut virome to illustrate the impact of bacteriophages on individual microbes, microbiome structure and the host.

Recent publications

1. Bayfield, O.W., Shkoporov, A.N., Yutin, N., et al. Structural atlas of a human gut crassvirus. Nature (2023) In press.

2. Stockdale, S.R., Shkoporov, A.N., Khokhlova, E.V. et al. Interpersonal variability of the human gut virome confounds disease signal detection in IBD. Commun Biol 6, 221 (2023).

3. Shkoporov, A.N., Turkington, C.J. & Hill, C. Mutualistic interplay between bacteriophages and bacteria in the human gut. Nat Rev Microbiol 20, 737–749 (2022).

4. Shkoporov, A.N., Stockdale, S.R., Lavelle, A. et al. Viral biogeography of the mammalian gut and parenchymal organs. Nat Microbiol 7, 1301–1311 (2022).

5. Shkoporov, A.N., Khokhlova, E.V., Stephens, N. et al. Long-term persistence of crAss-like phage crAss001 is associated with phase variation in Bacteroides intestinalis. BMC Biol 19, 163 (2021).