Diverse enzymatic activities mediate antiviral immunity in prokaryotes
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nihms-1667515.pdf
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Accepted version
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Author(s) • • • • • • • • •
Gao, Linyi
Altae-Tran, Han
Böhning, Francisca
Makarova, Kira S
Segel, Michael
Schmid-Burgk, Jonathan L
Koob, Jeremy
Wolf, Yuri I
Koonin, Eugene V
Zhang, Feng
Date Issued
2020
Journal
Science
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Citation
Gao, Linyi, Altae-Tran, Han, Böhning, Francisca, Makarova, Kira S, Segel, Michael et al. 2020. "Diverse enzymatic activities mediate antiviral immunity in prokaryotes." Science, 369 (6507).
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Bacteria and archaea are frequently attacked by viruses and other mobile genetic elements and rely on dedicated antiviral defense systems, such as restriction endonucleases and CRISPR, to survive. The enormous diversity of viruses suggests that more types of defense systems exist than are currently known. By systematic defense gene prediction and heterologous reconstitution, here we discover 29 widespread antiviral gene cassettes, collectively present in 32% of all sequenced bacterial and archaeal genomes, that mediate protection against specific bacteriophages. These systems incorporate enzymatic activities not previously implicated in antiviral defense, including RNA editing and retron satellite DNA synthesis. In addition, we computationally predict a diverse set of other putative defense genes that remain to be characterized. These results highlight an immense array of molecular functions that microbes use against viruses.
MIT Department
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering
McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences
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Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1126/SCIENCE.ABA0372