NIH VideoCast - WALS: Innate Immunity for Bacteria Against Phage

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WALS: Innate Immunity for Bacteria Against PhageHHS Only

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Air date:	Wednesday, March 17, 2021, 3:00:00 PM Time displayed is Eastern Time, Washington DC Local
Views:	Total views: 296 (217 Live, 79 On-demand)
Category:	HHS Only
Runtime:	01:01:40
Closed captioning:	Check box to display CC outside of the video Note: You can drag the captioning window around and resize it
Description:	Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series Dr. Laub is a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institutes of Technology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. His lab studies the biological mechanisms and evolution of how cells process information to regulate their own growth and proliferation. Using bacteria as a model organism, the lab seeks to understand the selective pressures and mechanisms that drive the evolution of signaling pathways. Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are ubiquitous genetic elements in bacterial genomes, but their functions are poorly understood and even controversial. To better understand these systems, we developed an RNA-seq-based method for sensitively probing their activities in vivo. Using this method, we find no compelling evidence to support the purported role of TA systems as stress-response modules, despite their strong transcriptional induction following stress. Instead, we find that some TA systems provide potent protection against bacteriophage. In contrast to defense systems like CRISPR and restriction-modification, TA systems must be tightly regulated and switched on rapidly following phage infection. I will present our in-depth study of how one TA system, called toxIN, is specifically activated by T4 phage, as well as insights into how this TA system ultimately disrupts phage development. I will conclude with a broader discussion of the notion that TA systems may represent a major, but underappreciated, component of bacterial innate immunity against their ubiquitous phage predators. For more information go to https://oir.nih.gov/wals

Author:	Michael Laub, Ph.D., Professor of biology, Massachusetts Institutes of Technology
CIT Live ID:	41451
Permanent link:	https://videocast.nih.gov/watch=41451

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