Funktion rätselhafter Retrons entschlüsselt

VAAM-Forschungspreis 2021 Bacterial retrons are operons containing reverse transcriptases. Despite three decades of research, their physiological role remained mysterious. Recently, retrons have been uncovered as a widespread novel class of antiphage defense systems. We here discuss how high-throughput reverse genetics have enabled this discovery, illustrating the power such approaches have to illuminate the function of uncharacterized genes.