Monday, February 1st, 2016
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Long Qian, Ph.D., and colleagues demonstrated that a subpopulation of bacteria carrying a restriction-modification (RM) system suffers from autoimmunity--a stochastic process which temporarily disrupts the host's genome integrity. The above image shows induction of the SOS response due to a double-stranded DNA break caused by such an RM system.
Other highlights of the paper include observations that RM systems occasionally cleave self-DNA (self-restriction), and that individual bacteria can recover from self-restriction and maintain viability. Please click here for the full paper.
Long Qian, Ph.D.