Gubaphage is the new starin-Amongst 140000 human gut species found.

A study performed by scientists at EMBL-EBI( EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute) and Wellcome Sanger Institute have discovered beyond 140,000 viral species present in the human gut. The article is published in the journal Cell, on 18th February 2021.

To carry out the study 28000 gut micro biome specimens were isolated from various nations around the world. From the human gut, 2898 bacterial genomes and 28,060 public human gut metagenomes were isolated and researched, then researchers categorized the biodiversity of these viral species. The study had some astonish result.

Scientist could determine beyond 140,000 viral species present in the human gut and surprisingly around half was unknown and never seen in the human world. The human gut, itself has a world in it. The gut has bacteria, viruses and bacteriophages(a virus that infects bacteria). More study of the human gut can open up a research path on the mechanism behind the effects of gut species on human health. It is mostly seen that any disparity in the gut microbiome leads to intricate problems such as obesity, allergy, inflammatory bowel diseases.

Few questions are still mystery to human mind, which needs to be recognized. So how does the gut microbiome function?It is still a mystery and less understood. Why do bacteriophages infect gut bacteria? Knowing their effect on human disease and health can lead to many outbreaks of scientific facts.

The study was carried out using the samples that were withdrawn from healthy people without any particular disease. Numerous unknown species were found from the samples of the human gut, and an attempt was initiated to clarify the bridge between human health & the gut microbiome.

According to Dr Alexandre Almeida, a postdoctoral fellow from Wellcome Sanger Institute & EMBL-EBI quotes that not all viruses are bad, but still represent a basic part of the gut biota.

According to the report, most of the discovered viruses have DNA as genetic material, unlike pathogens like zika or SARS-CoV-2 which have RNA as a genetic material.

Gubaphage
Among the thousands discovered viruses one virus which scientist named it as Gubaphage was found. It is believed to have a common ancestor. This is believed to be the next most common virus clade present in the human gut after crAssphage, which was identified in 2014.

crAssphage and gubaphage appear to infect similar forms of bacteria present in the gut. To confirm a special and precise feature of gubaphage, a lot of research and study has to be carried out.

According to Dr Luis F. Camarillo-Guerrero, the author of the article claimed that to carry out the research it was to ensure that the remodelled viral genomes were of supreme and high quality. Experiments were carried out with a strict quality control pipeline also with a machine learning method facilitated to alleviate the infection and acquire highly complete viral genetic makeups.

The supreme quality of the viral genome helps to clearly understand the function of viruses in the human gut microbiome also helps in understanding and unravelling novel therapeutic measures like antimicrobials from bacteriophage sources.

GDP(Gut Phage Database)
GDP is the outcomes of the research. It is a highly curated database comprising 142,809 non-redundant phage genomic sequences. Those who are exploring bacteriophages, then this serves to be an open indispensable library.

Dr Trevor Lawley, senior writer of the article, Wellcome Sanger Institute mentioned that bacteriophage study is now experiencing a revitalization. This supreme-quality, large-scale list of human intestinal viruses comes at the proper interval to function as a blueprint to help evolutionary and ecological analysis in the upcoming virome research.