Overall, our findings underscore the complex interplay within the gut microbiome, where antibiotics not only affect bacteria but also reshape the associated phage communities, and in turn again influence the bacterial populations.
We look forward to get further interesting insights in future works!

We believe that its phages are the key players!
By targeting these dominant bacteria, these phages create opportunities for other bacterial species to re-colonize, ultimately helping to regain diversity in the gut!

We believe that "Kill-the-Winner" dynamics are at play: Antibiotics create a disturbance allowing certain bacteria to flourish.
Parabacteroides distasonis is one of those, and typically thrives after cephalosporin treatment.
What wasn't fully understood was why it loses its dominance.

3rd: Despite the initial loss of some phage species, we saw a temporary and significant increase in the number of dominant, virulent phages. But why?

2nd: Gut phages are unique to each individual (nothing new) and here we show that your unique phage "fingerprint" largely persists even after strong perturbations. So, in a way, your phages remain truly yours!

We studied the dynamics of gut phage populations in healthy individuals who received antibiotic treatment: 3rd Gen Cephalosporins.
1st: Antibiotics💊do not only just affect bacteria🦠 but also their viruses. We observed a 20% decrease in the richness+diversity, but (lucky us) it recovers over time!

This work sheds light on the underappreciated role of phages in post-antibiotic gut microbiome recovery. We think this is just the beginning!

More infos here: github.com/EpfeiferNutr...
and👇
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

A great example:
Parabacteroides distasonis known to bloom after treatment🦠➡️🔋and only when its phages were absent.
But when they (phages) were around and burst 📈 P. distasonis bacteria were hardly detectable 🦠➡️🪫

🧐We believe these phages help gut recovery! 🛡️
They prevent bacterial blooms of (e.g., antibiotic-resistant) species that would otherwise dominate the gut.

💥 Most surprising: some phages thrived the day after treatment! More than on any other day.
🚀 BUT: these phages were virulentand NOT induced prophages. So, what is their role 🤔?

So, what happens to gut phages after antibiotics?🤔 20% of them vanished after treatment 📉, but over time, recovery occurred
📌The response was highly individual-specific, reinforcing the uniqueness of each person’s microbio- and phageome!

We found >6400 phage species🧮, lots of high quality🌟, most predicted to be temperate, ca. 1900🆕 ones, and (super exciting!) a lot are also phage-plasmids!

🧐We fine-tuned the analysis of the phageome part taken from the CEREMI trial🔍
Briefly: 22 volunteers (healthy background) received antibiotic treatment💊 typical for a clinical setting. Their 💩 were analyzed over a period up to 180 days after treatment for phages and bacteria