ArticleScientific reports2025
The number of immune defence and counter-defence systems sustained in the arms race between prokaryotes and viruses.
Article in Scientific reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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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
1 citing paper in PubMed.
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Prokaryotes have evolved various mechanisms to counter viruses, which in their turn developed numerous strategies to avoid defences of the hosts. Dozens of these defence and counter-defence mechanisms have recently been discovered, yet a given virus or its host possesses only several of such systems. Here, we present numerical and theoretical arguments for the existence of the maximal number of ecologically and evolutionary sustainable defence and counter-defence systems maintained by both sides at any time of the never-ending evolutionary arms race. We find that the number of such systems is of the order of 10 for a broad range of assumptions about the costs and benefits of defence and counter-defence mechanisms and their specificity. This limit appears as a result of a compromise between the metabolic and autoimmune costs of adding a new layer of defence and the benefits it conveys.
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Registered trials
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