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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.
Efficient phage synthesis yields O157 antigen-specific phages with the detection tag at optimal sites, enabling specific detection of diverse E. coli O157 clinical isolates and suggesting broad applications in bacterial detection and phage therapy.
SAR11 bacteria and their phages are abundant in the oceans. Here the authors quantify the number of phage-infected SAR11 cells using microscopy techniques and discover phage-infected cells without any detectable ribosomes. They hypothesize that ribosomal RNA may be used for the synthesis of phage genomes.
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.