• If It Walks Like DNA, and Talks Like DNA…

    by Merry Youle — Con­juga­tive plas­mids and trans­posons have been found guilty of spread­ing an­tibi­otic re­sis­tance genes from pathogen to pathogen. But how do they get past the bac­te­r­ial de­fenses against in­com­ing for­eign DNA? Most bac­te­ria have some sort of re­stric­tion-mod­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem to take care of just such mol­e­c­u­lar in­vaders. With such a sys­tem…

  • A Pro­tec­tion Racket

    by Merry Youle — Two re­view pa­pers pub­lished last year each de­voted many pages to re­count­ing the nu­mer­ous ways that bac­te­ria avoid be­com­ing phage food. The list of de­fenses at­tests not only to the in­tense se­lec­tion pres­sure ex­erted by phages, but also to the evo­lu­tion­ary quick-foot­ed­ness of their in­tended hosts. Be­cause…