APC Microbiome Ireland & School of Microbiology, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
Department of Medicine, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland.
Nat Rev Microbiol. 2022 Dec;20(12):737-749. doi: 10.1038/s41579-022-00755-4. Epub 2022 Jun 30.
Bacteriophages (phages) are often described as obligate predators of their bacterial hosts, and phage predation is one of the leading forces controlling the density and distribution of bacterial populations. Every 48 h half of all bacteria on Earth are killed by phages. Efficient killing also forms the basis of phage therapy in humans and animals and the use of phages as food preservatives. In turn, bacteria have a plethora of resistance systems against phage attack, but very few bacterial species, if any, have entirely escaped phage predation. However, in complex communities and environments such as the human gut, this antagonistic model of attack and counter-defence does not fully describe the scope of phage-bacterium interactions. In this Review, we explore some of the more mutualistic aspects of phage-bacterium interactions in the human gut, and we suggest that the relationship between phages and their bacterial hosts in the gut is best characterized not as a fight to the death between enemies but rather as a mutualistic relationship between partners.
噬菌体（phages）通常被描述为其细菌宿主的专性捕食者，噬菌体捕食是控制细菌种群密度和分布的主要力量之一。地球上每 48 小时就有一半的细菌被噬菌体杀死。高效的杀伤也是噬菌体在人类和动物中的治疗基础，以及噬菌体作为食品防腐剂的使用基础。反过来，细菌有大量的抵抗噬菌体攻击的系统，但很少有细菌物种，如果有的话，完全逃脱了噬菌体的捕食。然而，在复杂的群落和环境中，如人类肠道，这种攻击和防御的对抗模式并不能完全描述噬菌体-细菌相互作用的范围。在这篇综述中，我们探讨了人类肠道中噬菌体-细菌相互作用的一些更具共生性的方面，并提出噬菌体与其肠道细菌宿主之间的关系最好不是描述为敌人之间的生死斗争，而是描述为伙伴之间的共生关系。
