Interactions between simple molecular mechanisms give rise to complex infection dynamics

(Institute of Science and Technology Austria) Bacteria can themselves be infected -- by viruses. Not all viruses are harmful to bacteria and some can even benefit them. Can bacteria tell good and bad viruses apart? Scientists now studied how infections with potentially beneficial viruses play out in bacteria that carry a certain type of anti-viral immune mechanism called restriction-modification. They show that population-level interactions between viruses and bacteria influence how the infection proceeds.
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - Category: Biology Source Type: news