David Roy, Kevin T Huguet, Frédéric Grenier, and Vincent Burrus
Nucleic Acids Research, gkaa518, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa518
The spread of antibiotic resistance by mobile genetic elements is a serious world-wide public health issue. Therefore, a clear understanding of the mechanisms by which these vectors can spread and persist in a bacterial population is crucial to develop new control strategies. In this study, the authors describe several discoveries regarding how the mobile genetic elements that contain antibiotic resistance genes evade destruction by bacterial defense systems (such as CRISPR and restriction enzymes) that normally block the import of new genetic material.