Microbiomes are ecosystems, and their stability can impact the health of their hosts. Theory predicts that predators influence ecosystem stability. Phages are key predators of bacteria in microbiomes, but phages are unusual predators because many have lysogenic life cycles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFinfections are getting increasingly serious as antimicrobial resistance spreads. Phage therapy may be a solution to the problem, especially if improved by current advances on phage-host studies. As a mucosal pathogen, we hypothesize that and its phages are linked to the bacteriophage adherence to mucus (BAM) model.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe asthma pandemic imposes a huge burden on patients and health systems in both developed and developing countries. Despite available treatments, symptom control is generally suboptimal, and hospitalizations and deaths remain at unacceptably high levels. A pivotal aspect of asthma that warrants further exploration is the influence of the respiratory microbiome and virome in modulating disease activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAllergic diseases can be affected by virus-host interactions and are increasingly linked with the tissue-specific microbiome. High-throughput metagenomic sequencing has offered the opportunity to study the presence of viruses as an ecologic system, namely, the virome. Even though virome studies are technically challenging conceptually and analytically, they are already producing novel data expanding our understanding of the pathophysiologic mechanisms related to chronic inflammation and allergy.
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