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Bacteria sting viral invaders

The cGAS–STING signalling pathway, which has a key role in antiviral immune responses in mammals, is found to have originated as an immune-defence system that protects bacteria against viral infection.
  1. Justin Jenson

    1. Justin Jenson is in the Department of Molecular Biology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas 75390, USA.

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  2. Zhijian J. Chen

    1. Zhijian J. Chen is in the Department of Molecular Biology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas 75390, USA, and at the Center for Inflammation Research and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

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Many multicellular animals respond to disease-causing agents, termed pathogens, using an evolutionarily conserved defence pathway called the cGAS–STING pathway1,2. Reports in the past few years of cGAS- and STING-like proteins in bacteria raised the possibility that this pathway is more evolutionarily ancient than was previously thought3–5. Writing in Nature, Morehouse et al.6 demonstrate that a functional cGAS–STING pathway exists in bacteria that can potently arrest bacterial growth, possibly as a means of defence against a type of virus known as a bacteriophage, or phage for short, that infects bacteria. The authors also provide evidence that the STING protein originated in bacteria before it was acquired by multicellular animals — our metazoan ancestors.

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Nature 586, 363-364 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02712-8

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