Molecular, Genetic, and Biochemical Nutrition Commons^™

Biogeographic Study Of Human Gut-Associated Crassphage Suggests Impacts From Industrialization And Recent Expansion, Tanvi P/ Honap, Krithivasan Sankaranarayanan, Stephanie L. Schnorr, Andrew T. Ozga, Christina Warinner, Cecil M. Lewis Jr.

Anthropology Faculty Research

CrAssphage (cross-assembly phage) is a bacteriophage that was first discovered in human gut metagenomic data. CrAssphage belongs to a diverse family of crAss-like bacteriophages thought to infect gut commensal bacteria belonging to Bacteroides species. However, not much is known about the biogeography of crAssphage and whether certain strains are associated with specific human populations. In this study, we screened publicly available human gut metagenomic data from 3,341 samples for the presence of crAssphage sensu stricto (NC_024711.1). We found that crAssphage prevalence is low in traditional, hunter-gatherer populations, such as the Hadza from Tanzania and Matses from Peru, as compared to …