François Rousset

Centre International de Recherche en Infectiologie, Lyon

What phage-bacteria interactions teach us on innate immunity

Across the tree of life, genetic conflicts between hosts and pathogens have fueled the diversification of intracellular defenses that collectively define innate immunity. While prokaryotic and eukaryotic immunity have long been considered very distinct, the recent discoveries of multiple defense systems protecting bacteria against phages have profoundly challenged this paradigm. In particular, some components of human innate immunity were shown to have a deep evolutionary origin in bacterial defenses. Illustrated by our recent discoveries of ATP nucleosidases and bacterial caspases, the existence of ancient immune components now suggests that phage-bacteria interactions can illuminate the genetic conflicts between eukaryotic hosts and their pathogens., which will be discussed in this seminar.

Selected references

• Rousset F. Innate immunity: the bacterial connection. Trends Immunol (2023)
• Rousset F. et al. A conserved family of immune effectors cleaves cellular ATP upon viral infection. Cell (2023)
• Rousset F., Sorek R. The evolutionary success of regulated cell death in bacterial immunity. Curr Opin Microbiol (2023)
• Rousset F. et al. Phages and their satellites encode hotspots of antiviral systems. Cell Host Microbe (2022)