Mining of Thousands of Prokaryotic Genomes Reveals High Abundance of Prophages with a Strictly Narrow Host Range
Gamaliel López-Leal, Laura Carolina Camelo-Valera, Juan Manuel Hurtado-Ramírez, Jérôme Verleyen, Santiago Castillo‐Ramírez, Alejandro Reyes
Abstract
Phages and prophages play an essential role in controlling their host populations either by modulating the host abundance or providing them with genes that benefit the host. The constant growth in next-generation sequencing technology has caused the development of powerful computational tools to identify phages and prophages with high precision. Making it possible to explore the prophage populations integrated into host genomes on a large scale. However, it is still a new and under-explored area, and efforts are still required to identify prophage populations to understand their dynamics with their hosts.