CRISPR-Cas immunity leads to a coevolutionary arms race between Streptococcus thermophilus and lytic phage.

ABSTRACT: CRISPR-Cas is an adaptive prokaryotic immune system that prevents phage infection. By incorporating phage-derived 'spacer' sequences into CRISPR loci on the host genome, future infections from the same phage genotype can be recognized and the phage genome cleaved. However, the phage can escape CRISPR degradation by mutating the sequence targeted by the spacer, allowing them to re-infect previously CRISPR-immune hosts, and theoretically leading to coevolution. Previous studies have shown that phage can persist over long periods in populations of Streptococcus thermophilus that can acquire CRISPR-Cas immunity, but it has remained less clear whether this coexistence was owing to coevolution, and if so, what type of coevolutionary dynamics were involved. In this study, we performed highly repl

SUBMITTER: Common J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6452269 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature