Thomas Wood, a professor of chemical engineering at Penn State, has led an innovative collaborative research project. This study opens up new territory of an uncharacterized defense mechanism in bacteria. If further developed, this finding might lead to new strategies to fight viral invaders, especially as antibiotic resistance is becoming an ever-growing threat.
Wood and his team honed in on a truly novel aspect of their viral world, the part played by ancient, dormant viruses locked inside bacterial cells. Their work elucidates the ways in which these ancient defenders shield us from viral assault. It’s a brilliant display of the subtle and elaborate evolutionary strategies bacteria have honed and perfected over billions of years.
The Discovery of Cryptic Prophage DNA
The sequel, led by Thomas Wood’s team, has just been published in Nucleic Acids Research. They honed in particularly on cryptic prophage DNA, which is usually ignored in genetic studies. Their investigation into this silent viral DNA led them to a thrilling find. It encodes an invertase, allowing it to invert and generate two new “chimeric proteins” in the bacterial chromosome.
These CRISPR-associated chimeric proteins function as the bacterial bodyguards that protect the bacteria from sometimes lethal viral assaults. The viral proteins do this by blocking viruses from binding to the exterior of bacterial cell, making for a nasty first line of defense.
“It’s remarkable that this process actually produces new chimeric proteins, specifically from the inverted DNA—most of the time when you change DNA, you just get genetic mutations leading to inactive proteins,” – Thomas Wood.
To test this defense mechanism against viral infection, Wood’s team put down eight experimental iterations of this defense. Though their breakthrough research was extremely promising at first, they noticed that the virus eventually adjusted by changing its docking proteins. This quick mutational adaptation did the unexpected work of allowing the virus to dance around those bacterial defenses that had worked so well in the beginning.
Implications for Viral Research and Bioengineering
That knowledge will serve as a foundation for a new approach to bioengineering that could change how scientists tackle these issues and how we treat viruses entirely. Wood highlights the increasing importance to better understand how bacteria respond to viral assaults. Understanding this will be critical before we can begin using viruses as potential alternatives to antibiotics for treating human infections.
Antibiotics are crashing, and the most probable replacement are antibiotics—in this case, viruses—are themselves. Before we can use viruses as replacements for antibiotics to treat human infections, we have to learn how bacteria protect themselves from viral invasion. This understanding is key to successful treatment. Wood stated.
The ramifications of this study go far beyond short-term bacterial protection. Wood emphasized a larger narrative that is part of many of these fossil tales. These stories would be valuable defenses still untested.
“This is a story about how a fossil protects its host from the outsider, and we have 10 other fossil-related stories that could offer their own defenses waiting to be tested,” – Thomas Wood.
An unexpected outcome of the study is that it draws attention to an emerging area of scientific research devoted to understanding antivirus systems in bacteria.
“There’s been a flurry of discoveries in the past few years related to antivirus systems in bacteria,” – Wood added.
Future Directions and Research Opportunities
While Thomas Wood’s research has possibilities for application, it suggests future directions for investigation into how bacteria defend themselves. Scientists are just starting to understand all these interactions. Equipped with this knowledge, they will be able to develop groundbreaking new ways to fight viral infections which are increasingly resistant to conventional methods.
“Having a greater understanding of how these viruses interact with bacteria will give us incredible insight on how to effectively and safely harness bacteria in bioengineering,” Wood explained.
As scientists continue to explore the complex world of bacterial defenses, they may uncover more ancient mechanisms that could prove beneficial in combating modern medical challenges. This last bit of information—that sleeping viruses can in fact be beneficial to their hosts—flips the script. This major advancement changes everything we thought we knew about microbial life.