• Phage Re­sponses to the SOS Re­sponse

    by Merry Youle — No mat­ter where a bac­terium lives, its DNA is some­times dam­aged by UV ra­di­a­tion, re­ac­tive oxy­gen species (ROSs), tox­ins, or other nasty things. Faced with such as­saults, as well as prob­lems in­her­ent in DNA repli­ca­tion, bac­te­ria evolved so­phis­ti­cated mech­a­nisms to de­tect and re­pair DNA dam­age. One widely con­served sys­tem, the SOS re­sponse, was first...

  • Killer Prophage for Hire

    by Merry — Lysogeny is a wide­spread form of sym­bio­sis among bac­te­ria, but hav­ing a res­i­dent prophage is a mixed bless­ing. A prophage can bring ben­e­fits such as re­sis­tance to at­tack by other phages or novel vir­u­lence fac­tors. But along with the ben­e­fits comes a li­a­bil­ity...