Single nucleotide variants drive evolutionary phage-host arms race in anaerobic carbon dioxide-converting microbiome

Metagenomics, metatranscriptomics and metabolic modelling followed a thermophilic CO2-converting (biomethanation) trickle bed reactor over 353 days of stepwise gas-feed perturbations, tracking single nucleotide variant trajectories in both prokaryotes and viruses. System destabilization triggered a viral bloom, and some community members recovered from phage infection through targeted modifications of their defense systems.