Abstract
Understanding the role of viruses within healthy human hosts remains a challenging frontier in scientific research. While the transmission of bacteria from mother to infant is well-established as a crucial factor in infant development, the transmission of viruses remains understudied and enigmatic. This study seeks to shed light on this topic by characterizing the viromes of mothers and their corresponding infants through metagenomic sequencing and extensive bioinformatic analysis. Our investigation focuses on three primary categories of viruses: 1) Human viruses, 2) Bacteriophages, and 3) Transient viruses from diet and the environment.
Our findings reveal that infants possessed a diverse and abundant viral composition as early as 24 hours of age. The composition of human viruses and transient viruses shared similarities between mother and infant pairs, suggesting potential vertical transmission. However, the composition of bacteriophages significantly differs between mothers and infants, making viromes distinguishable between the two groups. This suggests virome composition may be more heavily influenced by non-maternal factors such as environmental exposure during birth, and early diet. Published pipelines were utilised, and a novel pipeline from various bioinformatic tools was established for viral characterisation and quantification. The impact of sequencing depth was potentially a substantial factor in the identification of viral compositions. Several viruses that have important implications for human health were identified in our study which underscores the need for further research.
This research is among the first performed on maternal and infant viromes and is especially novel in the context of New Zealand. This may lead to further research in understanding the intricate role of viruses in early human development, and human health.