Monday, 27 June 2016

The race to understand and counter antibiotic resistance has received a boost thanks to a collaborative study involving researchers from the University of Otago’s Fineran Lab and the University of Toronto. The research team uncovered how viruses intent on infecting bacteria counter bacteria's CRISPR-Cas adaptive immune systems.

CRISPR-Cas systems recently hit the headlines as accurate gene editing tools. But their natural role is to give bacteria a genetic immunological memory of past infections so they can resist future invaders.

The study, published in Nature Microbiology, uncovered how viruses circumvent CRISPR-Cas adaptive immunity with anti-CRISPR proteins.

Read more about this arms race between bacteria and viruses, and its implications for antibiotic resistance, at the University of Otago’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology.