The role of rhizosphere phages in soil health

Abstract

While the One Health framework has emphasized the importance of soil microbiomes for plant and human health, one of the most diverse and abundant groups—bacterial viruses, i.e. phages—has been mostly neglected. This perspective reviews the significance of phages for plant health in rhizosphere and explores their ecological and evolutionary impacts on soil ecosystems. We first summarize our current understanding of the diversity and ecological roles of phages in soil microbiomes in terms of nutrient cycling, top-down density regulation and pathogen suppression. We then consider how phages drive bacterial evolution in soils by promoting horizontal gene transfer, encoding auxiliary metabolic genes that increase host bacterial fitness and selecting for phage-resistant mutants with altered ecology due to trade-offs with pathogen competitiveness and virulence. Finally, we consider challenges and avenues for phage research in soil ecosystems and how to elucidate the significance of phages for microbial ecology and evolution and soil ecosystem functioning in the future. We conclude that similar to bacteria, phages likely play important roles in connecting different One Health compartments, affecting microbiome diversity and functions in soils. From the applied perspective, phages could offer novel approaches to modulate and optimize microbial and microbe-plant interactions to enhance soil health.