Much like our bodies have immune mechanisms to fight off viruses, bacteria have also evolved defenses against phage infections. One such defense are "clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic ...

Gut contains millions of tiny viruses that actually help keep you healthy by controlling harmful bacteria and supporting your ...

Marraffini’s lab has led the way on much of this research. In particular, they have been studying a class of molecules in CRISPR-Cas10 systems called CARF effectors, which are proteins that are ...

OptE is predicted to be a transmembrane effector protein that binds cyclic nucleotides. optSE potently restricted phage replication but mutant phages that had loss-of-function mutations in anti-CBASS ...

The Johns Hopkins investigators say bacteria have long been known to use CRISPR-Cas systems to chop up phage DNA, break it down and get rid of it. Crucially, CRISPR systems can only destroy DNA that ...

Like people, bacteria get invaded by viruses. In bacteria, the viral invaders are called bacteriophages, derived from the ...

Bacteria get invaded by viruses called phages. Scientists are studying how bacteria use CRISPR to defend themselves from phages, which will inform new phage-based treatments for bacterial ...

“The Crispr-enhanced phages allow for degradation of the bacterial genome and would bypass several mechanisms by which bacteria can become resistant to phage,” says Saima Aslam, a professor of ...

Aca proteins act as regulators of the phage’s counter-defence. They make sure the initial burst of anti-CRISPR production that inactivates CRISPR is then rapidly dampened to low levels.

(Some other phage therapies are being considered as standalone treatments.) LBP-EC01 contains six phages, three of which are "lytic," meaning they invade bacterial cells and split them open.

More information: Peter Fineran, Phage anti-CRISPR control by an RNA- and DNA-binding helix–turn–helix protein, Nature (2024).