Sam Hobbs

Stories

Bacteria use a virus's own enzyme as an immune alarm

Lead author of the Science paper on CBASS activation

Bacteria have a last-resort defense against viruses: an infected cell kills itself before the virus can spread. Research published October 1 in Science shows the virus's own enzyme sets off that switch.

Updated Nov 1

Notable Quotes

Certain kinds of phages have a protein called a protease, which degrades other proteins. We found that the protease from the phage actually acts directly on the host protein, and that is the signal that turns on the whole signaling pathway.

from Bacteria use a virus's own enzyme as an immune alarm · Updated Nov 1

The fact that these systems are conserved between bacteria and humans suggests that they've been maintained in these different organisms for that entire evolutionary trajectory. The cells are telling us that this is a really important pathway because they've maintained it for billions of years.

from Bacteria use a virus's own enzyme as an immune alarm · Updated Nov 1