Bacteria and their viral predators (bacteriophages) are locked in a constant battle. In order to
proliferate in phage-rich environments, bacteria have an impressive arsenal of defence …

Phage T4 has provided countless contributions to the paradigms of genetics and
biochemistry. Its complete genome sequence of 168,903 bp encodes about 300 gene …

Bacteria have evolved diverse immunity mechanisms to protect themselves against the
constant onslaught of bacteriophages,–. Similar to how eukaryotic innate immune systems …

Most bacteria and archaea possess multiple antiviral defence systems that protect against
infection by phages, archaeal viruses and mobile genetic elements. Our understanding of …

Programmed cell death (PCD) in bacteria plays an important role in developmental
processes, such as lysis of the mother cell during sporulation of Bacillus subtilis and lysis of …

The hok (host killing) and sok (suppressor of killing) genes (hok/sok) efficiently maintain the
low-copy-number plasmid R1. To investigate whether the hok/sok locus evolved as a phage …

Programmed cell death (apoptosis) is well-established in many multicellular organisms.
Apoptosis purifies a tissue from cells that became useless or even harmful for the organism …

Many parasitic DNA elements including prophages and plasmids synthesize proteins that
kill the cell after infection by other phages, thereby blocking the multiplication of the infecting …

Bacteriophage T4 multiples poorly in Escherichia coli strains carrying the defective
prophage, e14; the e14 prophage contains the lit gene for late inhibitor of T4 in E. coli. The …

The Lit protease in Escherichia coliK-12 strains induces cell death in response to
bacteriophage T4 infection by cleaving translation elongation factor (EF) Tu and shutting …