Structures of the RNA-guided surveillance complex from a bacterial immune system
Published Web Location
https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10402
Abstract
Key player in bacterial immunityBacterial cells use CRISPRs (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) to defend against invading phages. The central catalytic component in this process is Cascade, a 12-subunit complex consisting of proteins and RNA. The structure of Cascade, free and bound to target RNA, has now been solved by cryoelectron microscopy and three-dimensional reconstruction. These structures show the changes in architecture that are induced by target binding, and will assist future studies addressing how these conformational changes affect restriction of the phage.
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