Rise of the virome

With at least a dozen companies having advanced microbiome-based therapies to the clinic, researchers have started looking beyond bacteria to other types of microbes that inhabit the gut. In Nature Medicine last month, a UCSF team raised the profile of the virome by showing specific viral species could become the first biomarker for predicting the onset of GvHD.

Although research in the microbiome has seen a rapid growth in the last few years, the vast majority of studies have focused on bacteria. But the microbial community inhabiting humans also includes viruses, fungi and archaea that could contribute to disease, which have been relatively underexplored...