Year: 2020
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: CrAss-like phages are double-stranded DNA viruses that are prevalent in human gut microbiomes. Here, we analyze gut metagenomic data from mother-infant pairs and patients undergoing fecal microbiota transplantation to evaluate the patterns of acquisition, transmission and strain diversity of crAss-like phages. We find that crAss-like phages are rarely detected at birth but are increasingly prevalent in the infant microbiome after one month of life. We observe nearly identical genomes in 50% of cases where the same crAss-like clade is detected in both the mother and the infant, suggesting vertical transmission. In cases of putative transmission of prototypical crAssphage (p-crAssphage), we find that a subset of strains present in the mother are detected in the infant, and that strain diversity in infants increases with time. Putative tail fiber proteins are enriched for nonsynonymous strain variation compared to other genes, suggesting a potential evolutionary benefit to maintaining strain diversity in specific genes. Finally, we show that p-crAssphage can be acquired through fecal microbiota transplantation.
Source: Nature Communications
Institutions: Stanford University, Stanford Medicine
Language: English
Subfield: Ecology
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $5,380
Funders: National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Center for Computational, Evolutionary and Human Genomics, Stanford University, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Stanford Cancer Institute
Awards: Emerging novel mechanisms of antibiotic resistance in the prevalent foodborne pathogen, Salmonella, G2649945114, G3647538435, Sequence-based pathogen discovery in post-stem cell transplantation syndromes, G8040362868, G8575751165, Stanford Cancer Institute, Institutional Training Grant in Genome Science
OpenAlex ID: W2999631700