病毒组研究：微生物组研究新热点

Virome: the next hotspot in microbiome research

摘要:

病毒组是指分布在各种环境中病毒的集合或病毒宏基因组的统称。病毒可以分布于水体、冰川、动植物甚至某些病毒当中，主要分为真核病毒、原核病毒和亚病毒。其在维持环境内稳态、生态系统平衡等方面起着非常重要的作用，并且与人类的健康密切相关。近年来，随着测序技术和数据分析水平的进步，人们能够采用宏基因组测序的方式研究病毒组并探究其在生态位中的潜在作用。人们在冰川、海洋、各种动植物中都得到了大量的病毒组数据，发现了众多未知病毒。人们研究病毒组主要是通过宏基因组数据挖掘和病毒样粒子 (Virus-like particles，VLPs) 分离富集测序两种方式进行分析处理。迄今为止，已存在多种不同的病毒组分离富集方法，并且针对病毒组的生物信息分析也数不胜数。然而，针对病毒组的富集和数据分析方法还缺少具体、完整的综述。文中将对病毒组的分离富集方法和数据分析进行整理与总结，并列举出部分采用病毒组分离富集方法进行的重要研究，旨在为相关人员提供参考，进一步促进病毒组研究领域的发展。

Abstract:

Virome is the collective term for the viral collection or viral metagenomes that are distributed in various environments. Viruses can be found in bodies of water, glaciers, plants, animals, and even some viruses, which are classified as eukaryotes, prokaryotes and subviruses. Viruses play very important role in maintaining environmental homeostasis and ecosystem balance, and are especially closely related to human health. In recent years, with the advancement of sequencing technology and data analysis, we are able to gain more insights into the virome and explore its potential role in the ecological niche by metagenomic sequencing. A large amount of viral data have been obtained from glaciers, oceans, and various plants and animals, and numerous unknown viruses have been discovered. Virome has been studied mainly through metagenomic data mining, as well as virus-like particles separation and enrichment. To date, several different methods for viral isolation and enrichment exist, and numerous bioinformatic analyses of the virome have been performed. However, there is a lack of specific and complete reviews on the enrichment and data analysis methods for the virome. Thus, our review will summarize viral isolation and enrichment methods and data analysis, and present some of the landmark research conducted by the enrichment method, to provide a reference for researchers of interest and further advance the field of virome research.