Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Gordeeva, Julia
• Morozova, Natalya
• Sierro, Nicolas
• Isaev, Artem
• Sinkunas, Tomas
• Tsvetkova, Ksenia
• Matlashov, Mikhail
• Truncaite, Lidija
• Morgan, Richard D
• Ivanov, Nikolai V
• Siksnys, Virgis
• Zeng, Lanying
• Severinov, Konstantin

Titel

BREX system of Escherichia coli distinguishes self from non-self by methylation of a specific DNA site

Ist Teil von

• Nucleic acids research, 2019-01, Vol.47 (1), p.253-265

Ort / Verlag

England

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Prokaryotes evolved numerous systems that defend against predation by bacteriophages. In addition to well-known restriction-modification and CRISPR-Cas immunity systems, many poorly characterized systems exist. One class of such systems, named BREX, consists of a putative phosphatase, a methyltransferase and four other proteins. A Bacillus cereus BREX system provides resistance to several unrelated phages and leads to modification of specific motif in host DNA. Here, we study the action of BREX system from a natural Escherichia coli isolate. We show that while it makes cells resistant to phage λ infection, induction of λ prophage from cells carrying BREX leads to production of viruses that overcome the defense. The induced phage DNA contains a methylated adenine residue in a specific motif. The same modification is found in the genome of BREX-carrying cells. The results establish, for the first time, that immunity to BREX system defense is provided by an epigenetic modification.