Acquisition and development of the gut microbiome are vital for immune education in neonates, especially those born preterm. As such, microbial communities have been extensively studied in the context of postnatal health and disease. Bacterial communities have been the focus of research in this area due to the relative ease of targeted bacterial sequencing and the availability of databases to align and validate sequencing data. Recent increases in high-throughput metagenomic sequencing accessibility have facilitated research to investigate bacteriophages within the context of neonatal gut microbial communities. Focusing on unexplored viral diversity, has identified novel bacteriophage species and previously uncharacterised viral diversity. In doing so, studies have highlighted links between bacteriophages and bacterial community structure in the context of health and disease. However, much remains unknown about the complex relationships between bacteriophages, the bacteria they infect and their human host. With a particular focus on preterm infants, this review highlights opportunities to explore the influence of bacteriophages on developing microbial communities and the tripartite relationships between bacteriophages, bacteria and the neonatal human host. We suggest a focus on expanding collections of isolated bacteriophages that will further our understanding of the growing numbers of bacteriophages identified in metagenomes.

肠道微生物组的获得和发育对于新生儿（尤其是早产儿）的免疫教育至关重要。因此，微生物群落在产后健康和疾病的背景下得到了广泛的研究。由于目标细菌测序相对容易以及可用于比对和验证测序数据的数据库的可用性，细菌群落一直是该领域研究的焦点。最近高通量宏基因组测序可及性的提高促进了在新生儿肠道微生物群落背景下研究噬菌体的研究。专注于未探索的病毒多样性，已鉴定出新型噬菌体物种和以前未表征的病毒多样性。在此过程中，研究强调了噬菌体和细菌群落结构在健康和疾病背景下的联系。然而，对于噬菌体、它们感染的细菌和人类宿主之间的复杂关系，仍然有很多未知之处。这篇综述特别关注早产儿，强调了探索噬菌体对微生物群落发育的影响以及噬菌体、细菌和新生儿人类宿主之间三方关系的机会。我们建议重点关注扩大分离噬菌体的收集，这将进一步加深我们对宏基因组中发现的越来越多噬菌体的理解。