title: Remarkable Mechanisms in Microbes to Resist Phage Infections.
abstract: 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. The evolutionary outcome is a spectrum of remarkable strategies used by the bacteria and phages as they attempt to coexist. These approaches include adsorption inhibition, injection blocking, abortive infection, toxin-antitoxin, and CRISPR-Cas systems. In this review, we highlight the diverse and complementary antiphage systems in bacteria, as well as the evasion mechanisms used by phages to escape these resistance strategies.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand; email: peter.fineran@otago.ac.nz.
authors.forename: Ron L
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Dy
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand; email: peter.fineran@otago.ac.nz.
authors.forename: Corinna
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Richter
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1QW, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: George P C
authors.initials: GP
authors.lastname: Salmond
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Otago, Dunedin 9054, New Zealand; email: peter.fineran@otago.ac.nz.
authors.forename: Peter C
authors.initials: PC
authors.lastname: Fineran
keywords: Argonaute; CRISPR-Cas; abortive infection; bacteriophages; horizontal gene transfer; phage resistance; toxin-antitoxin