Angela Hickey

5 days ago | biorxiv.org | Jakob Wirbel |Angela Hickey |Daniel Chang |Nora J. Enright

AbstractGut bacteriophages profoundly impact microbial ecology and human health, yet they are greatly understudied. Using deep, long-read bulk metagenomic sequencing, a technique that overcomes fundamental limitations of short-read approaches, we tracked prophage integration dynamics in 12 longitudinal stool samples from six healthy individuals, spanning a two-year timescale.

Mar 20, 2024 | biorxiv.org | Danica T. Schmidtke |Angela Hickey |Ivan Liachko |Gavin Sherlock

AbstractThe prototypic crAssphage (Carjivirus communis) is one of the most abundant, prevalent, and persistent gut bacteriophages, yet it remains uncultured and its lifestyle uncharacterized. For the last decade, crAssphage has escaped plaque-dependent culturing efforts, leading us to investigate alternative lifestyles that might explain its widespread success. Through genomic analyses and culturing, we find that crAssphage uses a phage-plasmid lifestyle to persist extrachromosomally.