Our knowledge of prokaryotic defense systems has vastly expanded as the result of
comparative genomic analysis, followed by experimental validation. This expansion is both …

Conditions that sustain constant bacterial growth are seldom found in nature. Oligotrophic
environments and competition among microorganisms force bacteria to be able to adapt …

The arms race between cellular life forms and viruses is a major driving force of evolution. A
substantial fraction of bacterial and archaeal genomes is dedicated to antivirus defense. We …

Various mechanisms exist that enable bacteria to resist bacteriophage infection. Resistance
strategies include the abortive infection (Abi) systems, which promote cell death and limit …

Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems, stress-responsive genetic elements ubiquitous in microbial
genomes, are unusually abundant in the major human pathogen Mycobacterium …

The first bacterial genome was sequenced in 1995, and the first archaeal genome in 1996.
Soon after these breakthroughs, an exponential rate of genome sequencing was …

Toxin-antitoxin (TA) modules are ubiquitous gene loci among bacteria and are comprised of
a toxin part and its cognate antitoxin part. Under normal physiological conditions, antitoxin …

Background The prokaryotic toxin-antitoxin systems (TAS, also referred to as TA loci) are
widespread, mobile two-gene modules that can be viewed as selfish genetic elements …

Although similar to any other organism, prokaryotes can transfer genes vertically from
mother cell to daughter cell, they can also exchange certain genes horizontally. Genes can …

Although the phenomenon of bacterial cell death and lysis has been studied for over 100
years, the contribution of these important processes to bacterial physiology and …