Viromics approaches for the study of viral diversity and ecology in microbiomes

Journal Article · Mon Jul 21 00:00:00 EDT 2025 · Nature Reviews Genetics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41576-025-00871-w· OSTI ID:3008741

Roux, Simon; Coclet, Clement

Viruses are found across all ecosystems and infect every type of organism on Earth. Traditional culture-based methods have proven insufficient to explore this viral diversity at scale, driving the development of viromics, the sequence-based analysis of uncultivated viruses. Viromics approaches have been particularly useful for studying viruses of microorganisms, which can act as crucial regulators of microbiomes across ecosystems. They have already revealed the broad geographic distribution of viral communities and are progressively uncovering the expansive genetic and functional diversity of the global virome. Moving forward, large-scale viral ecogenomics studies combined with new experimental and computational approaches to identify virus activity and host interactions will enable a more complete characterization of global viral diversity and its effects.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER) (SC-23), Biological Systems Science Division (SC-23.2 )
• Grant/Contract Number: AC02-05CH11231
• OSTI ID: 3008741
• Journal Information: Nature Reviews Genetics, Journal Name: Nature Reviews Genetics Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 27
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

Ecology
Metagenomics
Microbiology
Sequencing
Viral genetics