Evolution and ecology of anti-defence systems in phages and plasmids

T Niault, S van Houte, E Westra, DC Swarts - Current Biology, 2025 - cell.com
Summary Prokaryotes (Bacteria and Archaea) encode a highly diversified arsenal of
defence systems that protect them against mobile genetic elements, such as phages and …

Phage-plasmid borne methionine tRNA ligase mediates epidemiologically relevant antimicrobial persistence

YL Tam, PM De Silva, CR Barker, R Li… - medRxiv, 2024 - medrxiv.org
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health crisis with few options for control. As
such, moving to predictive frameworks for identification of emerging bacterial strains capable …

Systematic functional assessment of antiphage systems in their native host

E David, C Plantady, S Poissonnier, J Le Boulch… - bioRxiv, 2024 - biorxiv.org
Bacterial resistance to bacteriophages (phages) relies on two primary strategies: preventing
phage attachment and blocking post-attachment steps. These latter mechanisms are …

Phage susceptibility to a minimal, modular synthetic CRISPR-Cas system in Pseudomonas aeruginosa is nutrient dependent

JFK Elliott, BNJ Watson, K Cozens, ER Westra… - bioRxiv, 2025 - biorxiv.org
CRISPR-Cas systems can provide adaptive, heritable immunity to their prokaryotic hosts
against invading genetic material such as phages. It is clear that the importance of acquiring …

Semantic mining of functional de novo genes from a genomic language model

AT Merchant, SH King, E Nguyen, BL Hie - bioRxiv, 2024 - biorxiv.org
Generative genomics models can design increasingly complex biological systems.
However, effectively controlling these models to generate novel sequences with desired …