Bacteriofiles

This episode: An interesting bacterial genetic element protects against viruses in a unique way! Download Episode (7.1 MB, 10.3 minutes) Show notes: Microbe of the episode: Mongoose associated gemykibivirus 1 News item Takeaways Even single-celled, microscopic organisms such as bacteria have to deal with deadly viruses infecting them. And while they don't have an immune system with antibodies and macrophages like we do, they still have defenses against infection, mostly based on sensing and destroying viral genomes. Restriction enzymes cut viral genomes at specific places, and CRISPR/Cas targets and destroys specific viral sequences. Knowing this, when microbiologists contemplate a strange genetic element of unknown function in bacteria, it's worth considering that it may be relevant to defense against phages.   The strange element in this case is retrons: a special reverse transcriptase enzyme takes a short non-coding RNA transcript and transcribes it into DNA, then links the RNA and DNA sequences togeth