Na Gao

The paper uses long-read sequencing to show that most gut phages are methylated, with many encoding their own methyltransferases, suggesting methylation helps phages evade host defenses.

The paper develops a method combining phage enrichment and long-read sequencing to recover more complete gut phage genomes from fecal samples, identifying a megabase phage and revealing hidden diversity.

This study shows that phages and plasmids increase prokaryotic genome size, while CRISPR reduces it, with CRISPR targeting phages more than plasmids.

The paper identifies human gut microbes that undergo consistent changes after transplantation into germ-free mice, highlighting challenges in replicating human microbiota phenotypes in mouse models.