Chunyu Liao, lead author of the study, in the HIRI lab. (Image: Mario Schmitt / HIRI)
Chunyu Liao, lead author of the study, in the HIRI lab. (Image: Mario Schmitt / HIRI) 03/22/2022 - Researchers from Würzburg, Freiburg and Leipzig discover a mechanism for prioritizing the immune response in bacteria. What tasks need to be done today, and which is the most urgent? People have to constantly set priorities in their daily life. Bacteria are no different: They too must prioritize when combating viruses with CRISPR. However, it was unclear how this prioritization takes place. Scientists from the Helmholtz Institute for RNA-based Infection Research (HIRI) in Würzburg, a joint venture of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig and Julius-Maximilians-Universität (JMU) Würzburg, in cooperation with researchers from the universities of Würzburg, Freiburg and Leipzig, have now described an underlying mechanism for the first time. Most bacteria use CRISPR-Cas systems to protect themselves against infecting viruses.
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