186-Inducible Prophages in the Human Gut

Paper Talk · Oct 27, 2025 · 14m

This article details the isolation, engineering, and ecological study of temperate bacteriophages found within the human gut. The research characterized 134 inducible prophages from a collection of bacterial isolates, finding that only a fraction of computationally predicted prophages could be experimentally induced in pure cultures. Crucially, the study demonstrated that human host-associated cellular products, such as those from lysed colonic cells (Caco2), can act as prophage induction triggers, suggesting a link between gastrointestinal cell lysis and phage activation. Furthermore, the…