Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 117, Issue 45, Pages 27777-27785Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1915966117
Keywords
CRISPR-Cas; bacteria; phage; evolution
Categories
Funding
- Natural Environment Research Council [NE/M018350/1]
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/N017412/1]
- European Research Council [ERC-STG-2016-714478-EVOIMMECH]
- US National Institutes of General Medical Science [GM091875-17, 1R35 GM136407-01]
- Emory University
- BBSRC [BB/N017412/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- NERC [NE/M018350/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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Articles on CRISPR commonly open with some variant of the phrase these short palindromic repeats and their associated endonucleases (Cas) are an adaptive immune system that exists to protect bacteria and archaea from viruses and infections with other mobile genetic elements. There is an abundance of genomic data consistent with the hypothesis that CRISPR plays this role in natural populations of bacteria and archaea, and experimental demonstrations with a few species of bacteria and their phage and plasmids show that CRISPR-Cas systems can play this role in vitro. Not at all clear are the ubiquity, magnitude, and nature of the contribution of CRISPR-Cas systems to the ecology and evolution of natural populations of microbes and the strength of selection mediated by different types of phage and plasmids to the evolution and maintenance of CRISPR-Cas systems. In this perspective, with the aid of heuristic mathematical-computer simulation models, we explore the a priori conditions under which exposure to lytic and temperate phage and conjugative plasmids will select for and maintain CRISPR-Cas systems in populations of bacteria and archaea. We review the existing literature addressing these ecological and evolutionary questions and highlight the experimental and other evidence needed to fully understand the conditions responsible for the evolution and maintenance of CRISPR-Cas systems and the contribution of these systems to the ecology and evolution of bacteria, archaea, and the mobile genetic elements that infect them.
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