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Review
. 2023 Oct;21(10):686-700.
doi: 10.1038/s41579-023-00934-x. Epub 2023 Jul 17.

The highly diverse antiphage defence systems of bacteria

Héloïse Georjon  1 , Aude Bernheim  2
Affiliations
Review

The highly diverse antiphage defence systems of bacteria

Héloïse Georjon et al. Nat Rev Microbiol. 2023 Oct.

Erratum in

Abstract

Bacteria and their viruses have coevolved for billions of years. This ancient and still ongoing arms race has led bacteria to develop a vast antiphage arsenal. The development of high-throughput screening methods expanded our knowledge of defence systems from a handful to more than a hundred systems, unveiling many different molecular mechanisms. These findings reveal that bacterial immunity is much more complex than previously thought. In this Review, we explore recently discovered bacterial antiphage defence systems, with a particular focus on their molecular diversity, and discuss the ecological and evolutionary drivers and implications of the existing diversity of antiphage defence mechanisms.

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