The altered gut virome community in rhesus monkeys is correlated with the gut bacterial microbiome and associated metabolites

BACKGROUND: The gut microbiome is closely associated with the health of the host; although the interaction between the bacterial microbiome and the whole virome has rarely been studied, it is likely of medical importance. Examination of the interactions between the gut bacterial microbiome and virome of rhesus monkey would significantly contribute to revealing the gut microbiome composition. METHODS: Here, we conducted a metagenomic analysis of the gut microbiome of rhesus monkeys in a longitudinal cohort treated with an antibiotic cocktail, and we documented the interactions between the bacterial microbiome and virome. The depletion of viral populations was confirmed at the species level by real-time PCR. We also detected changes in the gut metabolome by GC-MS and LC-MS. RESULTS: A majority of bacteria were depleted after treatment with antibiotics, and the Shannon diversity index decreased from 2.95 to 0.22. Furthermore, the abundance-based coverage estimator (ACE) decreased from 104.47 to 33.84, and the abundance of eukaryotic viruses also changed substantially. In the annotation, 6 families of DNA viruses and 1 bacteriophage family were present in the normal monkeys but absent after gut bacterial microbiome depletion. Intriguingly, we discovered that changes in the gut bacterial microbiome composition may promote changes in the gut virome composition, and tryptophan, arginine, and quinone may play roles in the interaction between the bacterial microbiome and virome. CONCLUSION: Our results indicated that the clearly altered composition of the virome was correlated with depletion in the bacterial community and that metabolites produced by bacteria possibly play important roles in the interaction. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12985-019-1211-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.