The Human Virome

This last decade has witnessed the democratization of high throughput next-generation sequencing technologies that revolutionized the way we are apprehending the viruses that continuously inhabit our body without any clinical symptoms of infection. This article describes what we currently know about the composition, diversity and dynamics of the human virome in different body compartments of healthy individuals. It also discusses the interplay between viruses and their bacterial or human hosts (including genetics and immunity) and how these interactions contribute to shape human health and disease.