The microbiome and virome are known to interact within the human body which in turn modulates the health and disease of an individual. While these interactions have been largely studied in bodily sites such as the gastrointestinal tract, the microbiome and virome of the female genital tract (FGT) remains largely understudied. Within the virome exists DNA and RNA viruses which are known to infect both eukaryotes and prokaryotes. While existing virome research within the FGT has focused largely on eukaryote infecting viruses, a large proportion of the virome consists of uncharacterized bacteriophages known as “dark matter”. Due to the lack of a specific gene marker for viruses, which is essential in qPCR quantification of other populations such as bacteria, determination of viral abundance and virome characterization has been limited. However, the staining of viral DNA has been found effective in visualizing and enumerating virus-like particles within various specimens. In this study, we seek to determine viral abundance within the FGT utilizing SYBR Gold nucleic acid stain to visualize VLP present within a cohort of cervicovaginal lavage (CVL) samples. Given these results we intend to draw conclusions regarding the interactions between the FGT virome and viral abundance as well as sexual-reproductive health. Understanding the complex relationship of the virome within the female reproductive tract is likely to have remarkable clinical implications and has the potential to progress both the diagnostic and treatment aspects of female sexual and reproductive health.

Urologic diseases interstitial cystitis (IC), overactive bladder (OAB), and urinary tract infection (UTI) affect tens of millions of people per year in the US alone. The human microbiome consists of a diverse community of bacteria (bacteriome) and viruses (virome) harbored in each individual that contributes to health and disease. Little is known about how the microbiome impacts urinary disorders. Using next-generation metagenomic sequencing, we characterized the urinary bacteriome and virome of patients with urinary disorders (IC, OAB, and UTI) and healthy controls. We show that the bacteriome was distinctly altered in patients by their respective urinary disorder. IC was characterized by a distinct prevalence of the genus Lactobacillus, while OAB was characterized by the genus Bacteroides, and UTI was characterized by Comamonas. IC, OAB, and UTI all also had significantly differed virome profiles from healthy individuals. In particular, we found that Lactobacillus phages were significantly associated with IC and Corynebacterium virus was associated with UTI samples, meanwhile no particular virus was correlated with OAB samples. Overall, we show that changes in the urinary microbiome are associated with incidence and spectrum of urinary diseases. These findings could lead to new microbiome modalities of treatment.