ArticleNPJ biofilms and microbiomes2016
Piggyback-the-Winner in host-associated microbial communities.
Article in NPJ biofilms and microbiomes, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 168 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
168 citing papers in PubMed, 312 citations in OpenAlex.
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- The role of phages in plant-associated microbial communities.Essays in biochemistry · 2026Review
- Research on Prophages in Aquaculture from the Perspective of Paradigm Borrowing: Advances in Pathogen Virulence, Antimicrobial Resistance, and Environmental Regulation.Microorganisms · 2026Review
- Exploring the ecological drivers of bacteriophage diversity and functional viral potential in the skin of the axolotl Ambystoma altamirani.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2026Article
- Phage host range: determinants, dynamics and applications.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Salinity-driven niche partitioning of aquatic viruses in one of Europe's largest estuaries.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Artificial Intelligence in Bacteriophage Science: A Comprehensive Narrative Review of Applications, Challenges, and Translational Opportunities.Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Genomic Insights into a New Burkholderia cenocepacia Sequence Type Linked to Cepacia Syndrome in Cystic Fibrosis.Current microbiology · 2026Article
- Alternating High-Fat and Polysaccharide Diets Modulates Gut Phage-Bacterial Interplay.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- The chicken gut virome: spatial structuring and extensive diversity of 19,778 viral populations.mSystems · 2026Article
- Gut Microbiota, Diet and Lipid Metabolism in Adolescents with NAFLD and Their Role in Preventive Strategies.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Phage-Microbiota Interactions in the Gut: Implications for Health and Therapeutic Strategies.Probiotics and antimicrobial proteins · 2026Review
- Dynamics of gut bacteriophage in diversity outbred mice studied over lifespan and during extreme caloric restriction.Microbiome · 2026Article
- The epidermal ecotone: a proposed model system for marine viral ecology at the animal-environmental interface.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2026Review
- Metagenomic analysis of the human gut virome reveals functional signatures and viral stability across hospitalized and non-hospitalized diarrheal and non-diarrheal individuals.Gut pathogens · 2026Article
- Viral and eukaryotic drivers of prokaryotic and antibiotic resistance gene diversity in wastewater microbiomes.Microbiome · 2026Article
- Spatial structure: shaping the ecology and evolution of microbial communities.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2026Review
- Metagenomic analysis of the DNA virome communities in swine lungs.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
108 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Phages can exploit their bacterial hosts by lytic infection, when many viral particles are released at cell lysis, or by lysogeny, when phages integrate into the host's genome. We recently proposed a new dynamic model of bacteria-phage interactions in which lysogeny predominates at high microbial abundance and growth rates. This model, named Piggyback-the-Winner (PtW), contrasts to current accepted models on the frequency of lysis and lysogeny and predicts that phages integrate into their hosts' genomes as prophages when microbial abundances and growth rates are high. According to PtW, switching to the temperate life cycle reduces phage predation control on bacterial abundance and confers superinfection exclusion, preventing that a closely-related phage infects the same bacterial cell. Here we examine how PtW is important for metazoans. Specifically, we postulate that PtW and the recently described bacteriophage adherence to mucus (BAM) model are strongly interrelated and have an important role in the development of the microbiome. In BAM, phage produced by the microbiome attach to mucins and protect underlying epithelial cells from invading bacteria. Spatial structuring of the mucus creates a gradient of phage replication strategies consistent with PtW. We predict that lysogeny is favored at the top mucosal layer and lytic predation predominates in the bacteria-sparse intermediary layers. The lysogeny confers competitive advantage to commensals against niche invasion and the lytic infection eliminates potential pathogens from deeper mucus layers.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.