A novel immunity system for bacterial nucleic acid degrading toxins and its recruitment in various eukaryotic and DNA viral systems

Zhang, Dapeng; Iyer, Lakshminarayan M.; Aravind, L.

Availability of an enormous wealth of genomic sequence data provides opportunities to identify novel versions of such toxins and associated immunity and delivery systems through computational analysis, thereby opening the door for new investigations on nucleic acid-modifying enzymes. The first step in this process requires detailed case-by-case analysis of protein sequences and structures using the best available methods for detecting sequence and structure similarity. Results from such an analysis of protein structures needs to be further combined with in-depth analysis of genomic contexts and domain architectures to glean novel functional associations. Finally, these results need to be placed in the context of phyletic patterns of the occurrence of various components of the system in order to reconstruct a total picture of their natural history and predict aspects of their biochemistry and biological functions.