...Hans Gerstmans; Lorena Rodríguez-Rubio; Rob Lavigne; Yves Briers One of the last untapped reservoirs in nature for the identification of new anti-microbials is bacteriophages, the natural killers of bacteria. Lytic bacteriophages encode peptidoglycan (PG) lytic enzymes able to degrade the PG layer...

... compilation © 2013 Biochemical Society 2013 bacteriophage chromosomal targeting clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) Csy genome engineering genomic island horizontal gene transfer Being constantly challenged by foreign genetic elements, such as phages...

.... Some systems appear to have evolved in a number of pathogenic bacteria towards a role in virulence and host immune evasion. Recently, different bacterial cell envelope components from diverse bacterial species have been linked not only to bacteriophage defence, but also to virulence features...

... and generate small non-coding interfering RNAs that specifically guide nucleases for sequence-specific cleavage of complementary sequences. Among the four CRISPR–Cas systems present in Streptococcus thermophilus , CRISPR1 and CRISPR3 have the ability to readily acquire new spacers following bacteriophage...

..., control protein–protein interactions, which in turn determine whether recombination proceeds. The present review brings together the evidence for this model derived from the studies on φC31 integrase, Bxb1 integrase and other related proteins. bacteriophage excision φC31 integrase integration...