Biological complexity: bacteria fight viruses (Introduction)

by David Turell , Monday, April 20, 2015, 14:38 (3505 days ago) @ David Turell

A hand-like molecular structure interferes with viral RNA:-"In a recent paper in the leading journal Science, the team has shown how a surveillance complex in the bacterial immune system is able to target specific sites on RNA molecules to destroy invading viruses and other foreign genetic elements.-"The researchers, who include Otago postdoctoral fellow Dr Raymond Staals, believe this targeting mechanism could one day be adapted to engineer microbes to serve a variety of purposes, including environmental clean-up, green chemistry, and the production of safer, more effective therapeutic drugs.-"In their paper, the team have provided the first high-resolution structural images of a fully intact Type III CRISPR-Cas surveillance complex bound to its target RNA, thereby showing how the RNA-targeting mechanism in this complex works.-"Dr Staals, who is based in Otago's Department of Microbiology & Immunology, says the complex recognises and snips single-stranded RNA molecules at multiple sites allowing bacteria to destroy viral genetic material before it hijacks their cells.-"'A hand-like structure in the complex grips the RNA target, and then a thumb-like structure on the hand pushes the RNA into the right position in the catalytic site to be cleaved," he says."-
 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-04-key-element-bacterial-immune.html#jCp