title: Improved bacteriophage genome data is necessary for integrating viral and bacterial ecology.
abstract: The recent rise in "omics"-enabled approaches has lead to improved understanding in many areas of microbial ecology. However, despite the importance that viruses play in a broad microbial ecology context, viral ecology remains largely not integrated into high-throughput microbial ecology studies. A fundamental hindrance to the integration of viral ecology into omics-enabled microbial ecology studies is the lack of suitable reference bacteriophage genomes in reference databases-currently, only 0.001% of bacteriophage diversity is represented in genome sequence databases. This commentary serves to highlight this issue and to promote bacteriophage genome sequencing as a valuable scientific undertaking to both better understand bacteriophage diversity and move towards a more holistic view of microbial ecology.
authors.affiliation: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, 709 Benedum Hall, Pittsburgh, PA, 15261, USA, bibbykj@pitt.edu.
authors.forename: Kyle
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Bibby
mesh_terms: D001435:Bacteriophages / Q000235:genetics*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004463:Ecology; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D016679:Genome, Viral; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA