Metagenomic sequencing techniques allows the study of microbiomes from all sorts of habitats, and using this to explore phages (bacteriophage genomes integrated into the circular bacterial chromosome) has expanded knowledge of viruses that integrate into bacterial genomes and how they benefit their hosts.
October 5, 2022
Metagenomic sequencing techniques allows the study of microbiomes from all sorts of habitats, and using this to explore phages (bacteriophage genomes integrated into the circular bacterial chromosome) has expanded knowledge of viruses that integrate into bacterial genomes and how they benefit their hosts.
Flinders University Ph.D. candidate Laura Inglis—part of the Flinders Accelerator for Microbiome Exploration (FAME) lab, an interdisciplinary research group at Flinders University’s College of Science and Engineering—has outlined the advantages in her new research published on transforming phages.
The paper, « How Metagenomics Has Transformed Our Understanding of Bacteriophages in Microbiome Research, » by Laura Inglis and Robert Edwards, has been published in the journal Microorganisms.
« The microbiome is an essential part of most ecosystems, but it has been especially difficult to study microbiomes from all sorts of habitats, » says Ms Inglis. « Metagenomic sequencing changes this. It is especially useful for finding phages from many different environmental conditions, but many genomes are added to databases without the inclusion of comprehensive metadata.
« Being able to automatically sort these sequences into an environmental ontology would allow for these sequences to be useful in future projects, but we need considerably more high-quality data to determine how best to sort these sequences. »
The increasing number of sequences uploaded to online databases has both pros and cons. It means that more data is available for use but curating such a vast amount of data is becoming unmanageable.
« There are many challenges with curating metagenomes but the use of machine learning for automatic curation could alleviate some of the problems, » explains Ms Inglis.
