473: Bacteriophage Bunks in Bacterial Barriers

This episode: A bacteriophage that overcomes the bacterial
CRISPR/Cas immune system by interrupting the CRISPR DNA with its
own genome!


Download Episode (6.8 MB, 10 minutes)

Show notes:
Microbe of the episode: Wenzhou mammarenavirus




Takeaways



Bacteria have many ways to resist being exploited by
bacteriophage viruses, including the adaptable CRISPR/Cas
system that uses a piece of viral nucleic acid sequence to
target and destroy incoming phages. But phages also have
many ways to evade and disrupt bacterial defenses.

In this study, a phage is discovered that inserts its own
genome into the CRISPR/Cas sequence in the bacterial
genome, disrupting the bacterial defenses. To escape the
defenses while it is doing this insertion, it carries genes
for previously-unknown anti-CRISPR proteins. But inserting
and removing a viral sequence from the bacterial genome is
not always a clean procedure.


 
Journal Paper:
Varble A, Campisi E, Euler CW, Maguin P, Kozlova A, Fyodorova
J, Rostøl JT, Fischetti VA, Marraffini LA. 2021. Prophage
integration into CRISPR loci enables evasion of antiviral
immunity in Streptococcus pyogenes. 12. Nat Microbiol
6:1516–1525.




Other interesting stories:



Great article on the history of phage therapy




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com. Thanks for listening!


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