Semirandom DNA adducts regulate a filamentous defense-associated reverse transcriptase
Nolan Neville, Nicole V. Johnson, Edwin E. Escobar, Chang-Hwa Chiang, Albana Nreca, Sean R. Johnson, Nan Dai, Andy Hanneman, Ivan R. Corrêa, Jason S. McLellan, Robert J. Trachman · 2026
Read Semirandom DNA adducts regulate a filamentous defense-associated reverse transcriptase by Nolan Neville, Nicole V. Johnson, Edwin E. Escobar, Chang-Hwa Chiang, Albana Nreca, Sean R. Johnson, Nan Dai, Andy Hanneman, Ivan R. Corrêa, Jason S. McLellan, Robert J. Trachman (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13275509.txt.
Description
Nolan Neville and a large team report a 2026 journal article solving how a bacterial defense machine uses scrambled DNA as a weapon. Certain bacteria fight invading viruses, called phages, with reverse transcriptase enzymes that write DNA without a template. How the resulting semi-random DNA helps defense was unknown. The team studied one system, DRT1, with cryo-electron microscopy and lab tests.
DRT1 starts DNA synthesis from its own protein, producing random-ish DNA tags stuck to itself. Making DNA switches on its second enzyme domain, while the tags drive the proteins to stack into long filaments locked in a dormant state, their active sites tucked away. Mutant phages that escaped pointed to a phage helicase the system needs, revealing how the trap is sprung.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Nolan Neville, Nicole V. Johnson, Edwin E. Escobar, Chang-Hwa Chiang, Albana Nreca, Sean R. Johnson, Nan Dai, Andy Hanneman, Ivan R. Corrêa, Jason S. McLellan, Robert J. Trachman |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 76985 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |