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Bacterial twist to an antiviral defence

The discovery of an antiviral defence system in bacteria that shares some components with a key antiviral defence pathway in animals provides insight into how this important response might have evolved.
  1. Karen L. Maxwell

    1. Karen L. Maxwell is in the Department of Biochemistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1M1, Canada.

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Humans face a daily threat of infection by harmful viruses. To repel them, our immune system mounts an immediate response following invasion that depends on its ability to recognize general characteristics indicating that viruses are foreign entities. This type of reaction, generated by an ancient branch of the immune system known as innate immunity, occurs in all plants and animals. Many genes involved in innate immune responses are evolutionarily conserved and encode proteins that are used for defence purposes in different species1–3. Writing in Nature, Cohen et al.4 report that some bacterial species fight viral infections by using an innate immune mechanism that is related to one of the central components of innate immunity in animals called the cGAS–STING pathway. Their findings reveal that this crucial antiviral defence system in animals might have its evolutionary roots in bacteria.

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Nature 574, 638-639 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02974-x

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