Target preference of Type III-A CRISPR-Cas complexes at the transcription bubble

Tina Y. Liu, Jun-Jie Liu, Abhishek J. Aditham, Eva Nogales and Jennifer A. Doudna ()
Additional contact information
Tina Y. Liu: University of California
Jun-Jie Liu: University of California
Abhishek J. Aditham: University of California
Eva Nogales: University of California
Jennifer A. Doudna: University of California

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Type III-A CRISPR-Cas systems are prokaryotic RNA-guided adaptive immune systems that use a protein-RNA complex, Csm, for transcription-dependent immunity against foreign DNA. Csm can cleave RNA and single-stranded DNA (ssDNA), but whether it targets one or both nucleic acids during transcription elongation is unknown. Here, we show that binding of a Thermus thermophilus (T. thermophilus) Csm (TthCsm) to a nascent transcript in a transcription elongation complex (TEC) promotes tethering but not direct contact of TthCsm with RNA polymerase (RNAP). Biochemical experiments show that both TthCsm and Staphylococcus epidermidis (S. epidermidis) Csm (SepCsm) cleave RNA transcripts, but not ssDNA, at the transcription bubble. Taken together, these results suggest that Type III systems primarily target transcripts, instead of unwound ssDNA in TECs, for immunity against double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) phages and plasmids. This reveals similarities between Csm and eukaryotic RNA interference, which also uses RNA-guided RNA targeting to silence actively transcribed genes.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10780-2 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-10780-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10780-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().