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Updated: Jul 12, 2025
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Dissecting Innate Immune Signaling in Viral Evasion of Cytokine Production
Published on: March 2, 2014
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Functionally comparable but evolutionarily distinct nucleotide-targeting effectors help identify conserved paradigms
Gianlucca G Nicastro1, A Maxwell Burroughs1, Lakshminarayan M Iyer1
1Computational Biology Branch, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, USA.
Nucleic Acids Research
|October 27, 2023
Summary
Scientists discovered novel immune effectors targeting nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA and RNA. These nucleotide-degrading systems, found in bacteria, represent a new frontier in biological immunity.
Area of Science:
- Molecular Biology
- Immunology
- Genomics
Background:
- Nucleic acid-targeting effectors are key in biological conflicts and anti-selfish element immunity.
- Recent research identified immune effectors targeting nucleotide building blocks and cellular energy currency.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify and characterize novel nucleotide-targeting immune effectors.
- To explore the diversity and evolutionary origins of these effectors in prokaryotic systems.
Main Methods:
- Comparative genomics and sequence-structure analysis were employed.
- Identification of novel effector domains: Calcineurin-CE, HD-CE, and PRTase-CE.
- Analysis of ParB and MazG domain variants in immune systems.
Main Results:
- Discovered multiple distinct effector domains targeting nucleotide linkages.
- Identified at least 17 functional themes of prokaryotic immune systems utilizing these effectors.
- Found systems sensing modified nucleotides and utilizing HSP90/HSP70 modules.
Conclusions:
- Nucleotide-degrading effectors represent an emerging immune paradigm with origins in housekeeping systems.
- Limited integration of these effectors into eukaryotic immunity suggests interoperability barriers.
- This work expands the understanding of microbial defense mechanisms.
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