CRISPR-Cas Toxin-Antitoxin Systems: Selfishness as a Constructive Evolutionary Force.

Trends Microbiol

San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, USA. Electronic address:

Published: October 2021

A recent paper (Li et al.) reports a novel RNA-based Cas-dependent toxin-antitoxin system with the effect of 'addicting' cells to the cassette. Broadly-defined addiction systems could stabilize diverse genomic features, raising the question of the role of selfish elements and intragenomic conflict in the evolution of biological complexity.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2021.07.005DOI Listing

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