The human gut virome has an important role in human health but its dynamics remain poorly understood. Few longitudinal studies in healthy adults showed a stable temporal gut virome, with high inter-individual diversity. In contrast, the infant virome shows a high temporal intra-individual diversity. Unfortunately, these virome studies ignore an enormous amount of unknown ‘dark matter’ sequences, leading to incomplete analyses and possibly incorrect conclusions. Also, the interactions between prokaryotes and bacteriophages in the gut seem to be too complex for currently available models. Therefore, there is a huge need of larger longitudinal cohort studies focusing on both the bacterial and viral component of the microbiome to be able to describe and understand this complex ecosystem.

人体肠道病毒在人类健康中具有重要作用，但其动态机制仍然知之甚少。在健康成年人中，很少有纵向研究显示出稳定的颞肠病毒，且个体间差异较高。相反，婴儿病毒体表现出较高的时间个体内多样性。不幸的是，这些病毒学研究忽视了大量未知的“暗物质”序列，从而导致分析不完整，并可能得出错误的结论。同样，对于目前可用的模型，原核生物和肠道中噬菌体之间的相互作用似乎太复杂了。因此，迫切需要针对微生物组的细菌和病毒成分的大型纵向队列研究，以描述和理解这一复杂的生态系统。