Recent advances in viral metagenomics have enabled the rapid discovery of an unprecedented catalogue of phages in numerous environments, from the human gut to the deep ocean. Although these advances have expanded our understanding of phage genomic diversity, they also revealed that we have only scratched the surface in the discovery of novel viruses. Yet, despite the remarkable diversity of phages at the nucleotide sequence level, the structural proteins that form viral particles show strong similarities and conservation. Phages are uniquely interconnected from an evolutionary perspective and undergo multiple events of genetic exchange in response to the selective pressure of their hosts, which drives their diversity. In this Review, we explore phage diversity at the structural, genomic and community levels as well as the complex evolutionary relationships between phages, moulded by the mosaicity of their genomes.

中文翻译：

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噬菌体多样性、基因组学和系统发育。

病毒宏基因组学的最新进展使我们能够在从人类肠道到深海的众多环境中快速发现前所未有的噬菌体目录。尽管这些进展扩大了我们对噬菌体基因组多样性的理解，但它们也揭示了我们在发现新型病毒方面只触及了皮毛。然而，尽管在核苷酸序列水平上噬菌体具有显着的多样性，但形成病毒颗粒的结构蛋白显示出强烈的相似性和保守性。从进化的角度来看，噬菌体具有独特的相互联系，并且响应宿主的选择压力，经历了多次遗传交换事件，从而推动了它们的多样性。在这篇综述中，我们探索了结构上的噬菌体多样性，