Abstract

Many studies have examined the lung virome in health and complaint. Issues of lung transplantation are known to be told by several honored respiratory contagions, but global understanding of the virome of the transplanted lung is deficient. To define the DNA virome within the respiratory tract following lung transplantation we carried out metagenomic analysis of allograft bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL), and compared with healthy and HIV subjects.Viral concentrates were purified from BAL and anatomized by shotgun DNA sequencing. All of the BAL samples contained reads mapping to anelloviruses, with high proportions in lung transplant samples. Anellovirus populations in transplant donors were complex, with multiple concurrent variants. Quantitative polymerase chain response quantification revealed that anellovirus sequences were56-fold more abundant in BAL from lung transplant donors compared with healthy controls or HIV subjects (p<0.0001). Anellovirus sequences were also more abundant in upper respiratory tract samples from lung transplant donors than controls (p = 0.006). Comparison to metagenomic data on bacterial populations showed that high anellovirus loads identified with dysbiotic bacterial communities in allograft BAL (p = 0.008). Therefore the respiratory tracts of lung transplant donors contain high situations and complex populations of anelloviruses, warranting studies of anellovirus lung infection and transplant outgrowth.