Just like us, bacteria are under constant threat of infection by viruses (called phages). We’ve found that many bacteria are armed with sophisticated viral defence systems powered by reverse ...

NEW YORK, NY (Aug. 8, 2024) -- Since the genetic code was first deciphered in the 1960s, our genes seemed like an open book. By reading and decoding our chromosomes as linear strings of letters, like ...

Because CRISPR news tends to focus on the applications of genome editing—such as treating genetic diseases or improving food—it may be easy to forget that the system is, at its core, used by bacteria ...

Although retrons have been known, for decades, to be bacterial genetic retroelements that encode a reverse transcriptase (RT) that uses small RNA as a template to produce multicopy single-stranded DNA ...

Researchers now understand the function of an elusive small DNA in bacteria and have developed a tool that can be used to better understand what might 'switch on' bacterial immune defenses. Since ...

A 'loopy' discovery in bacteria is raising fundamental questions about the makeup of our own genome -- and revealing a potential wellspring of material for new genetic therapies. A "loopy" discovery ...