Max Planck Tandem Group in Computational Biology, Department of Biological Sciences, School of Sciences, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá 111711, Colombia.
Department of Pathology and Immunology, The Edison Family Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology, Washington University School of Medicine, St Louis, MO 63108, USA.
Viruses. 2020 Aug 19;12(9):905. doi: 10.3390/v12090905.
Phage biology has been developing for the last hundred years, and the potential of phages as tools and treatments has been known since their early discovery. However, the lack of knowledge of the molecular mechanisms coded in phage genomes hindered the development of the field. With current molecular methods, the last decade has been a resurgence of the field. The Special Issue on "Diversity and Evolution of Phage Genomes" is a great example with its 17 manuscripts published. It covers some of the latest methods to sample and characterize environmental and host associated viromes, considering experimental biases and computational developments. Furthermore, the use of molecular tools coupled with traditional methods has allowed to isolate and characterize viruses from different hosts and environments with such diversity that even a new viral class is being proposed. The viruses described cover all different phage families and lifestyles. However, is not only about diversity; the molecular evolution is studied in a set of manuscripts looking at phage-host interactions and their capacity to uncover the frequency and type of mutations behind the bacterial resistance mechanisms and viral pathogenesis, and such methods are opening new ways into identifying potential receptors and characterizing the bacterial host range.
噬菌体生物学在过去的一百年中不断发展，自早期发现以来，噬菌体作为工具和治疗方法的潜力已为人所知。然而，由于缺乏对噬菌体基因组中编码的分子机制的了解，该领域的发展受到了阻碍。随着当前分子方法的发展，该领域在过去十年中重新兴起。本期关于“噬菌体基因组的多样性和进化”的特刊就是一个很好的例子，其中发表了 17 篇论文。它涵盖了一些最新的方法来采样和描述环境和宿主相关的病毒组，同时考虑了实验偏差和计算发展。此外，分子工具与传统方法的结合使用使得能够从不同的宿主和环境中分离和鉴定具有如此多样性的病毒，甚至提出了一种新的病毒类。所描述的病毒涵盖了所有不同的噬菌体科和生活方式。然而，这不仅关乎多样性；一组研究噬菌体-宿主相互作用及其揭示细菌耐药机制和病毒发病机制背后突变频率和类型的论文研究了分子进化，这些方法为识别潜在的受体和描述细菌宿主范围开辟了新途径。
