Dark_matter_in_human_gut_virome

The gut microbiome is widely accepted to have a significant impact on human health yet, despite years of research on this complex ecosystem, the forces driving microbial population structure remain poorly understood. We propose that bacteriophage (phage) are one of the main agents responsible for homeostasis and resilience in the gut microbiome. Surprisingly, the majority of phage sequences are unidentified.This poor representation of phage species in sequence databases, hampers our ability to investigate phage dynamics and phage-host interaction. In this project we plan to carry out deep sequencing of the human gut phageome. These assemblies may then be used to improve phage representation in databases, investigate the role of previously unidentified species in shaping the gut microbiome and investigate phage present at low abundances.