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Improved Bacteriophage Genome Data is Necessary for Integrating Viral and Bacterial Ecology

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Abstract

The recent rise in “omics”-enabled approaches has lead to improved understanding in many areas of microbial ecology. However, despite the importance that viruses play in a broad microbial ecology context, viral ecology remains largely not integrated into high-throughput microbial ecology studies. A fundamental hindrance to the integration of viral ecology into omics-enabled microbial ecology studies is the lack of suitable reference bacteriophage genomes in reference databases—currently, only 0.001 % of bacteriophage diversity is represented in genome sequence databases. This commentary serves to highlight this issue and to promote bacteriophage genome sequencing as a valuable scientific undertaking to both better understand bacteriophage diversity and move towards a more holistic view of microbial ecology.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, 709 Benedum Hall, Pittsburgh, PA, 15261, USA

    Kyle Bibby

  2. Department of Computational and Systems Biology, University of Pittsburgh Medical School, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA

    Kyle Bibby

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  1. Kyle Bibby
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Correspondence to Kyle Bibby.

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Bibby, K. Improved Bacteriophage Genome Data is Necessary for Integrating Viral and Bacterial Ecology. Microb Ecol 67, 242–244 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-013-0325-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00248-013-0325-x

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