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A stockpile of antiviral defences

The full list of weapons used by bacteria against viruses is not known. A computational approach has uncovered nine previously unidentified antiviral systems, encoded by genes near known defence genes in bacterial genomes.
  1. Sébastien Levesque

    1. Sébastien Levesque is in the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Bioinformatics, Faculty of Sciences and Engineering, Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec G1V 0A6, Canada.

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  2. Sylvain Moineau

    1. Sylvain Moineau is in the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Bioinformatics, Faculty of Sciences and Engineering, Laval University, Quebec City, Quebec G1V 0A6, Canada, and at the Félix d’Hérelle Reference Center for Bacterial Viruses, Laval University.

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Fighting viruses is no easy task. Bacteria have survived attacks by viruses called phages by evolving sophisticated defence strategies that enable them to thrive even in virus-rich ecosystems. However, phages have evolved counter-tactics to thwart such mechanisms1, leading to a biological arms race. Now Doron et al.2 report the identification of previously unknown antiviral systems in bacteria.

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Nature 556, 318-319 (2018)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-04367-y

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