Members of a highly widespread bacteriophage family are hallmarks of metabolic syndrome gut microbiomes

Abstract

There is significant interest in altering the course of cardiometabolic disease development via the gut microbiome. Nevertheless, the highly abundant phage members -which impact gut bacteria- of the complex gut ecosystem remain understudied. Here, we characterized gut phageome changes associated with metabolic syndrome (MetS), a highly prevalent clinical condition preceding cardiometabolic disease. MetS gut phageome populations exhibited decreased richness and diversity, but larger inter-individual variation. These populations were enriched in phages infecting Bacteroidaceae and depleted in those infecting Ruminococcaeae. Differential abundance analysis identified eighteen viral clusters (VCs) as significantly associated with either MetS or healthy phageomes. Among these are a MetS-associated Roseburia VC that is related to healthy control-associated Faecalibacterium and Oscillibacter VCs. Further analysis of these VCs revealed the Candidatus Heliusviridae, a highly widespread gut phage lineage found in 90+% of the participants. The identification of the temperate Ca. Heliusviridae provides a novel starting point to a better understanding of the effect that phages have on their bacterial hosts and the role that this plays in MetS.