Phage-based biocontrol strategies and their application in agriculture and aquaculture.

Meeting global food demands for a growing human population with finite natural resources is a major challenge. Aquaculture and agriculture are critical to satisfy food requirements, yet suffer significant losses from bacterial diseases. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop novel antimicrobial strategies, which is heightened by increasing antibiotic resistance.

Remarkable Mechanisms in Microbes to Resist Phage Infections.

Bacteriophages (phages) specifically infect bacteria and are the most abundant biological entities on Earth. The constant exposure to phage infection imposes a strong selective pressure on bacteria to develop viral resistance strategies that promote prokaryotic survival. Thus, this parasite-host relationship results in an evolutionary arms race of adaptation and counteradaptation between the interacting partners.

Priming in the Type I-F CRISPR-Cas system triggers strand-independent spacer acquisition, bi-directionally from the primed protospacer.

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR), in combination with CRISPR associated (cas) genes, constitute CRISPR-Cas bacterial adaptive immune systems. To generate immunity, these systems acquire short sequences of nucleic acids from foreign invaders and incorporate these into their CRISPR arrays as spacers. This adaptation process is the least characterized step in CRISPR-Cas immunity.

Gene regulation by engineered CRISPR-Cas systems.

The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) arrays and their CRISPR associated (Cas) proteins constitute adaptive immune systems in bacteria and archaea that provide protection from bacteriophages, plasmids and other mobile genetic elements (MGEs). Recently, the ability to direct these systems to DNA in a sequence-specific manner has led to the emergence of new technologies for engineered gene regulation in bacteria and eukaryotes. These systems have the potential to enable facile high-throughput functional genomics studies aimed at identifying gene function and will be a crucial tool for synthetic biology.

A widespread bacteriophage abortive infection system functions through a Type IV toxin-antitoxin mechanism.

Bacterial abortive infection (Abi) systems are 'altruistic' cell death systems that are activated by phage infection and limit viral replication, thereby providing protection to the bacterial population. Here, we have used a novel approach of screening Abi systems as a tool to identify and characterize toxin-antitoxin (TA)-acting Abi systems. We show that AbiE systems are encoded by bicistronic operons and function via a non-interacting (Type IV) bacteriostatic TA mechanism.

Chromosomal targeting by CRISPR-Cas systems can contribute to genome plasticity in bacteria.

The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and their associated (Cas) proteins form adaptive immune systems in bacteria to combat phage and other foreign genetic elements. Typically, short spacer sequences are acquired from the invader DNA and incorporated into CRISPR arrays in the bacterial genome. Small RNAs are generated that contain these spacer sequences and enable sequence-specific destruction of the foreign nucleic acids.

Cytotoxic chromosomal targeting by CRISPR/Cas systems can reshape bacterial genomes and expel or remodel pathogenicity islands.

In prokaryotes, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPRs) and their associated (Cas) proteins constitute a defence system against bacteriophages and plasmids. CRISPR/Cas systems acquire short spacer sequences from foreign genetic elements and incorporate these into their CRISPR arrays, generating a memory of past invaders. Defence is provided by short non-coding RNAs that guide Cas proteins to cleave complementary nucleic acids.

A widely conserved molecular switch controls quorum sensing and symbiosis island transfer in Mesorhizobium loti through expression of a novel antiactivator.

ICEMlSym(R7A) of Mesorhizobium loti is an integrative and conjugative element (ICE) that confers the ability to form a nitrogen-fixing symbiosis with Lotus species. Horizontal transfer is activated by TraR and N-acyl-homoserine lactone (AHL), which can stimulate ICE excision in 100% of cells. However, in wild-type cultures, the ICE is excised at low frequency.