ESI, Biosciences, University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus, Penryn, UK.
ESI, Biosciences, University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus, Penryn, UK.
J Mol Biol. 2023 Apr 1;435(7):167974. doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2023.167974. Epub 2023 Jan 20.
CRISPR-Cas are prokaryotic defence systems that provide protection against invasion by mobile genetic elements (MGE), including bacteriophages. MGE can overcome CRISPR-Cas defences by encoding anti-CRISPR (Acr) proteins. These proteins are produced in the early stages of the infection and inhibit the CRISPR-Cas machinery to allow phage replication. While research on Acr has mainly focused on their discovery, structure and mode of action, and their applications in biotechnology, the impact of Acr on the ecology of MGE as well as on the coevolution with their bacterial hosts only begins to be unravelled. In this review, we summarise our current understanding on the distribution of anti-CRISPR genes in MGE, the ecology of phages encoding Acr, and their coevolution with bacterial defence mechanisms. We highlight the need to use more diverse and complex experimental models to better understand the impact of anti-CRISPR in MGE-host interactions.
CRISPR-Cas 是原核生物防御系统，可针对移动遗传元件（MGE），包括噬菌体的入侵提供保护。MGE 可通过编码抗 CRISPR（Acr）蛋白来克服 CRISPR-Cas 防御。这些蛋白在感染的早期阶段产生，并抑制 CRISPR-Cas 机制以允许噬菌体复制。虽然 Acr 的研究主要集中在它们的发现、结构和作用模式及其在生物技术中的应用上，但 Acr 对 MGE 生态以及与其细菌宿主的共同进化的影响才刚刚开始被揭示。在这篇综述中，我们总结了我们目前对 MGE 中抗 CRISPR 基因的分布、编码 Acr 的噬菌体的生态学以及它们与细菌防御机制的共同进化的理解。我们强调需要使用更多多样化和复杂的实验模型来更好地理解抗 CRISPR 在 MGE-宿主相互作用中的影响。
