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Bacterial viruses (phages) are promising alternatives to treat antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections, but finding matching phages against bacteria of interest is challenging. Here, Boeckaerts et al. present a machine learning approach that predicts phage-bacteria pairs at the strain level for Klebsiella pathogens.
The SPP1 tail completion protein, representative of a widespread family of essential phage proteins, is shown to play a role in capsid-tail attachment and to be essential for routing of phage DNA from the viral particle to the bacterial cytoplasm.
Viruses that infect bacteria shape microbial communities. Here, authors show that this may hold for bacteria isolated from the International Space Station, with spacefaring viruses correlated to host adaptation to the spaceflight environment.
The Sargasso Sea is a natural laboratory for understanding future conditions of warmer oceans and associated nutrient limitation. Here, the authors combined short- and long-read sequencing to survey Sargasso Sea viral communities.
The defense-associated sirtuin 2 (DSR2) system protects bacteria from phages by depleting NAD+. Here, authors elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying DSR2 assembly, activation, and inhibition, providing important insights into bacterial anti-phage defense.
This protocol describes toxin activation–inhibition conjugation (TAC–TIC), a reverse genetics screening approach that can be used to identify triggers or blockers of bacterial toxin–antitoxin or phage immunity systems.
Reporting in Nature Communications, Huo and colleagues provide three-dimensional structures of a bacterial immune defense system called Gabija. This work builds on recently published structural and functional studies and contributes strong evidence that protein assembly formation is essential for antiviral function.
We deeply characterized the early-life gut virome, which consists mainly of bacteriophages (phages) and the diversity of which greatly exceeds bacterial diversity. The virome was associated with later asthma development, independently of the bacterial hosts of the phages; we further uncovered intriguing interactions with immune genetics.
Two recent studies provide mechanistic understanding of how bacteria employ the Gabija system for defence against phages, as well as how phages use anti-defence proteins to overcome bacterial immunity.
In this Journal Club, Tao Zuo discusses a study by Gogokhia et al. who found that gut bacteriophages can alter mucosal immunity to impact mammalian health.