Fig. 1|.

Detection and characterization of virus-like particles (VLPs) in infant gut samples. a, Representative fields of fluorescently stained VLPs from infant stool sampled at month 0, 1, and 4. Scale bar = 10 μm. b, Quantification of VLP counts per gram. The minimum level of quantification was 6.6×10⁶ particles per gram (5 to 10 fields quantified per sample). c, Copy numbers of bacterial 16S rRNA genes analyzed using qPCR. The minimum level of quantification was 2000 copies per gram. d, VLP richness assessed using VLP metagenomic sequence data. Sequences reads were assembled into contigs, and contigs with viral character (at leat 50% of open reading frames annotating as viral) enumerated. Viral species were called present if at least 10 reads per million from one sample aligned to that contig. e, Taxonomic assignments of VLP sequences. Reads were associated with viral lineages based on annotation of viral contigs. In b–d, violin plots represent the actual distribution of the individual data sets, and samples were compared using two-sided Wilcoxon signed-rank tests.