“It doesn’t directly kill the target organisms, which is what we normally think of bacterial toxins doing within microbial communities.” Instead, colibactin tweaks microbial cells just so, activating latent – and lethal – viruses tucked away in some bacteria’s genomes. But among these chemical weapons, colibactin appears unusual, says Balskus, a chemical biologist at Harvard University. Microbes often generate noxious compounds to attack one another within the cramped quarters of the gut. A cryptic molecule called colibactin can summon the killer viruses from their slumber, they found. This viral awakening unleashes full-blown infections that destroy the virus-carrying cells, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator Emily Balskus's lab first published as a preprint on and later in the journal Nature on February 23, 2022. Some gut bacteria have a spooky superpower: they can reanimate dormant viruses lurking within other microbes.
Credit: Illustration © Fairman Studios, LLC Certain gut bacteria produce a molecule, called colibactin, that awakens bacteria-infecting viruses (dark red) lurking within neighboring microbes’ genomes.
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