For billions of years, viruses and bacteria have been embroiled in an arms race. In response to constant attacks by viruses known as bacteriophages—more commonly called "phages"—bacteria evolve new ...

Bacteria possess unique traits with great potential for benefiting society. However, current genetic engineering methods to harness these advantages are limited to a small fraction of bacterial ...

A comprehensive review explores how bacteria resist phage therapy and offers innovative solutions to combat this challenge. The authors discuss mechanisms like CRISPR-Cas and biofilm formation, and ...

Because CRISPR news tends to focus on the applications of genome editing—such as treating genetic diseases or improving food—it may be easy to forget that the system is, at its core, used by bacteria ...

Sukrit Silas and his colleagues at Gladstone Institutes and UC San Francisco discovered that a well-known defense system in some bacteria can kill the cell as a last resort if viruses try to thwart it ...