The Discovery of Phages in the Substantia Nigra and Its Implication for Parkinson’s Disease

Background: A century ago, a mystery between a virus and Parkinson’s disease (PD) was described. Owing to the limitation of human brain biopsy and the challenge of electron microscopy in observing virions in human brain tissue, it has been difficult to study the viral etiology of PD. Recent discovery of virobiota reveals that viruses coexist with humans as symbionts. Newly developed transcriptomic sequencing and novel bioinformatic approaches for mining the encrypted virome in human transcriptome make it possible to study the relationship between symbiotic viruses and PD. Nevertheless, whether viruses exist in the human substantia nigra (SN) and whether symbiotic viruses underlie PD pathogenesis remain unknown. Methods: We collected current worldwide human SN transcriptomic datasets from the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. We used bioinformatic approaches including viruSITE and the Viral-Track to identify the existence of viruses in the SN of patients. The comprehensive RNA sequencing-based virome analysis pipeline was used to characterize the virobiota in the SN. The Pearson’s correlation analysis was used to examine the association between the viral RNA fragment counts (VRFCs) and PD-related human gene sequencing reads in the SN. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the SN between PD patients and non-PD individuals were used to examine the molecular signatures of PD and also evaluate the impact of symbiotic viruses on the SN. Findings: We observed the existence of viruses in the human SN. A dysbiosis of virobiota was found in the SN of PD patients. A marked correlation between VRFC and PD-related human gene expression was detected in the SN of PD patients. These PD-related human genes correlated to VRFC were named as the virus-correlated PD-related genes (VPGs). We identified 3 bacteriophages (phages), including the Proteus phage VB_PmiS-Isfahan, the Escherichia phage phiX174, and the Lactobacillus phage Sha1, that might impair the gene expression of neural cells in the SN of PD patients. The Proteus phage VB_PmiS-Isfahan was a common virus in the SN of patients from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. VPGs and DEGs together highlighted that the phages might dampen dopamine biosynthesis and weaken the cGAS-STING function. Interpretation: This is the first study to discover the involvement of phages in PD pathogenesis. A lifelong low symbiotic viral load in the SN may be a contributor to PD pathogenesis. Our findings unlocked the black box between brain virobiota and PD, providing a novel insight into PD etiology from the perspective of phage–human symbiosis.