Bacteria can fend off viral infections by chopping up their DNA with their CRISPR-based immune system, but sufficient numbers of phages can overwhelm microbes’ defenses. In two papers published in Cell today (July 19), scientists report that part of phages’ strategy appears to be an “altruistic” method of invasion, in which viral genomes that never succeed in replicating nonetheless impair bacterial immunity and facilitate infection by other viruses.
“This work shows that phages can work together to disable bacterial immune systems, and this has important implications for using phage to treat human infections, since the dose of phage that is used can determine whether the phage is able to kill the bacteria,”
Stineke van Houte, a coauthor of one of the studies and a researcher at the University of Exeter, says in a press release.
To understand how phages get past bacteria’s CRISPR systems, van Houte and her colleagues looked ...
