Metagenomic Analyses of an Uncultured Viral Community from

Here we present the first metagenomic analyses of an uncultured viral community from human feces, using partial shotgun sequencing. Most of the sequences were unrelated to anything previously reported. The recognizable viruses were mostly siphophages, and the community contained an estimated 1,200 viral genotypes. The human gut is colonized by an abundant, active, and diverse microbiota. This microbiota has been studied exten-sively using culture-based assays and, more recently, by a va-riety of molecular methods including fluorescent in situ hybrid-ization, terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism, membrane assays, microarrays, and direct sequencing of 16