ArticleNature chemical biology2025
CRISPR-repressed toxin-antitoxin provides herd immunity against anti-CRISPR elements.
Article in Nature chemical biology, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Dynamic balance of CRISPR-Cas immunity and resistance plasmid anti-immunity mediated by a bifunctional protein AcrIE10.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Structural basis for dual mechanism of Cas2/3 nuclease inhibition by anti-CRISPR protein AcrIF19.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Review
- Article
- Associate toxin-antitoxin with CRISPR-Cas to harness (ATTACH) engineered microbes.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- Phage-associated Cas12p nucleases require binding to bacterial thioredoxin for activation and cleavage of target DNA.Nature microbiology · 2026Article
- Functional Coupling and Evolutionary Relationships Between Toxin-Antitoxin Systems and CRISPR-Cas Systems.Toxins · 2025Review
- Viral effectors trigger innate immunity across the tree of life.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Inducible transposon mutagenesis identifies bacterial fitness determinants during infection in mice.Nature microbiology · 2025Article
- Activation of bacterial programmed cell death by phage inhibitors of host immunity.Molecular cell · 2025Article
- Conformational change as a mechanism for toxin activation in bacterial toxin-antitoxin systems.Journal of virology · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Prokaryotic clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-Cas systems are highly vulnerable to phage-encoded anti-CRISPR (Acr) factors. How CRISPR-Cas systems protect themselves remains unclear. Here we uncovered a broad-spectrum anti-anti-CRISPR strategy involving a phage-derived toxic protein. Transcription of this toxin is normally repressed by the CRISPR-Cas effector but is activated to halt cell division when the effector is inhibited by any anti-CRISPR proteins or RNAs. We showed that this abortive infection-like effect efficiently expels Acr elements from bacterial population. Furthermore, we exploited this anti-anti-CRISPR mechanism to develop a screening method for specific Acr candidates for a CRISPR-Cas system and successfully identified two distinct Acr proteins that enhance the binding of CRISPR effector to nontarget DNA. Our data highlight the broad-spectrum role of CRISPR-repressed toxins in counteracting various types of Acr factors. We propose that the regulatory function of CRISPR-Cas confers host cells herd immunity against Acr-encoding genetic invaders whether they are CRISPR targeted or not.
Indexed as
Identifiers
39075253What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.