Bacteriophages Use RNA Decoys to Overcome CRISPR Defenses

In the arms race of bacteria and phages, bacteria employ immune responses to defend themselves against phage invasion, while phages, in turn, develop counteractive strategies to bypass bacterial defenses.In a Nature publication, Camara-Wilpert et al. shed light on a previously unknown mechanism employed by viruses to thwart bacterial antiviral defenses, which opens a new avenue for inhibiting clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas genome editing in eukaryotes as well as offering spatial, temporal, and conditional control over the process.