An Ecological Framework of the Human Virome Provides Classification of Current Knowledge and Identifies Areas of Forthcoming Discovery

Parker, Michael T.

However, the obvious importance of viruses in the composition of all biomes has not (yet) been met with an appropriate fervor for the characterization of the viral REVIEW Recent advances in sequencing technologies have opened the door for the classification of the human virome. While taxonomic classification can be applied to the viruses identified in such studies, this gives no information as to the type of interaction the virus has with the host. As follow-up studies are performed to address these questions, the description of these virus-host interactions would be greatly enriched by applying a standard set of definitions that typify them. This paper describes a framework with which all members of the human virome can be classified based on principles of ecology. The scaffold not only enables categorization of the human virome, but can also inform research aimed at identifying novel virus-host interactions. component of microbiomes. The original explosion of microbiome information was spurred by the utilization of 16S sequencing technology, which can give vast information about microbial communities using universal primers [11] . However, this technique is specific to organisms with ribosomes, so early research focused on analysis of bacterial sequences rather than much more technically challenging viral sequences [12] . Thankfully, recent advances in next generation sequencing technologies are making virome characterization more technologically and financially possible and will ensure an explosion of virome description in the near future [13, 14] .