Fig. 3

Impact of multiple freeze-thaw cycles on the composition of faecal phageomes and bacteriomes. a Outline of experimental protocol: fresh samples were collected from 3 individuals and subjected to 1–5 cycles of freezing at − 80 °C and complete thawing. One aliquot was kept at − 80 °C for 17 days to mimic long-term freezer storage. b Within- and between-subject Spearman distances of relative abundance values per sample in datasets obtained using metagenomic sequencing of phageomes and 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. c, d PCoA plots based on Spearman distances calculated for 16S rRNA amplicon and phageome datasets, respectively. e, f Heatplots of relative abundances of selected bacterial RSVs and viral contigs (> 0.5% in any of the samples) across samples collected in the experiment