Département de biochimie, de microbiologie et de bio-informatique, Faculté des sciences et de génie, Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada.
Groupe de recherche en écologie buccale, Faculté de médecine dentaire, Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada.
Nat Rev Microbiol. 2020 Mar;18(3):125-138. doi: 10.1038/s41579-019-0311-5. Epub 2020 Feb 3.
Recent advances in viral metagenomics have enabled the rapid discovery of an unprecedented catalogue of phages in numerous environments, from the human gut to the deep ocean. Although these advances have expanded our understanding of phage genomic diversity, they also revealed that we have only scratched the surface in the discovery of novel viruses. Yet, despite the remarkable diversity of phages at the nucleotide sequence level, the structural proteins that form viral particles show strong similarities and conservation. Phages are uniquely interconnected from an evolutionary perspective and undergo multiple events of genetic exchange in response to the selective pressure of their hosts, which drives their diversity. In this Review, we explore phage diversity at the structural, genomic and community levels as well as the complex evolutionary relationships between phages, moulded by the mosaicity of their genomes.
病毒宏基因组学的最新进展使人们能够在从人类肠道到深海等众多环境中快速发现前所未有的噬菌体目录。尽管这些进展扩展了我们对噬菌体基因组多样性的理解，但也表明我们在发现新型病毒方面只是略知一二。然而，尽管噬菌体在核苷酸序列水平上具有显著的多样性，但形成病毒颗粒的结构蛋白显示出很强的相似性和保守性。从进化的角度来看，噬菌体是独特地相互关联的，它们会经历多次遗传交换事件，以响应其宿主的选择压力，从而推动其多样性。在这篇综述中，我们探讨了噬菌体在结构、基因组和群落水平上的多样性，以及噬菌体之间复杂的进化关系，这些关系是由它们基因组的镶嵌性所塑造的。
