The secret social lives of viruses

Almost immediately after Sorek first described the phenomenon, in 2017, four independent groups — including Cheng’s and one led by structural biologist Alberto Marina at the Biomedical Institute of Valencia in Spain — set to work trying to reveal the molecular basis by which arbitrium peptides are made, sensed and acted on by phages. Working with José Penadés, a microbiologist at the University of Glasgow, UK, Marina showed that the receptor for arbitrium in the phage can interface not only with genes in the bacterium that help the virus to reproduce, but also with other, unrelated stretches of DNA. The teams — one led by phage biologist Joe Bondy-Denomy at the University of California, San Francisco, the other by CRISPR expert Edze Westra and virologist Stineke van Houte at the University of Exeter, UK — watched as viruses bombarded bacteria with specialized proteins designed to break down the cells’ CRISPR-based immune defences.

Source: www.nature.com