Australian Centre for Ecogenomics, School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, University of Queensland, St. Lucia, Queensland 4072, Australia.
Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol. 2012 Feb;46(2):127-31. doi: 10.1165/rcmb.2011-0253OC. Epub 2011 Oct 6.
Microbial communities in the lungs of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have been shown to be spatially heterogeneous. Viral communities may also vary spatially, leading to localized viral populations and infections. Here, we characterized viral communities from multiple areas of the lungs of two patients with late-stage CF using metagenomics, that is, the explanted lungs from a transplant patient and lungs acquired postmortem. All regions harbored eukaryotic viruses that may infect the human host, notably herpesviruses, anelloviruses, and papillomaviruses. In the highly diseased apical lobes of explant lungs, viral diversity was extremely low, and only eukaryotic viruses were present. The absence of phage suggests that CF-associated microbial biofilms may escape top-down controls by phage predation. The phages present in other lobes of explant lungs and in all lobes of postmortem lungs comprised distinct communities, and encoded genes for clinically important microbial phenotypes, including small colony variants and antibiotic resistance. Based on the these observations, we postulate that viral communities in CF lungs are spatially distinct and contribute to CF pathology by augmenting the metabolic potential of resident microbes, as well as by directly damaging lung tissue via carcinomas and herpesviral outbreaks.
已证实囊性纤维化（CF）和慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）患者肺部的微生物群落存在空间异质性。病毒群落也可能存在空间差异，导致局部病毒群体和感染。在这里，我们使用宏基因组学对两名晚期 CF 患者肺部的多个区域的病毒群落进行了表征，即移植患者的肺和死后获得的肺。所有区域都存在可能感染人类宿主的真核病毒，特别是疱疹病毒、圆环病毒和乳头瘤病毒。在病变严重的肺尖区，病毒多样性极低，仅存在真核病毒。噬菌体的缺失表明，CF 相关的微生物生物膜可能通过噬菌体捕食逃脱自上而下的控制。存在于移植肺的其他区域和所有死后肺区域的噬菌体组成了不同的群落，并编码了临床上重要的微生物表型的基因，包括小菌落变体和抗生素耐药性。基于这些观察，我们推测 CF 肺部的病毒群落具有空间上的差异，并通过增强常驻微生物的代谢潜力，以及通过直接导致肺组织损伤（通过癌和疱疹病毒爆发），从而导致 CF 发病机制。
