@article{19857,
  abstract     = {Bacteria have evolved a wide range of defence strategies to protect themselves against bacterial viruses (phages). Most known bacterial antiphage defence systems target phages with DNA genomes, which raises the question of how bacteria defend against phages with RNA genomes. Bacterial toxin–antitoxin systems that cleave intracellular RNA could potentially protect bacteria against RNA phages, but this has not been explored experimentally. In this study, we investigated the role of a model toxin–antitoxin system, MazEF, in protecting Escherichia coli against two RNA phage species. When challenged with these phages, the native presence of mazEF moderately reduced population susceptibility and increased the survival of individual E. coli cells. Genomic analysis further revealed an underrepresentation of the MazF cleavage site in genomes of RNA phages infecting E. coli, indicating selection against cleavage. These results show that, in addition to other physiological roles, RNA-degrading toxin–antitoxin systems may also help defend against RNA phages.},
  author       = {Nikolic, Nela and Pleska, Maros and Bergmiller, Tobias and Guet, Calin C},
  issn         = {1744-957X},
  journal      = {Biology Letters},
  number       = {6},
  publisher    = {The Royal Society},
  title        = {{A bacterial toxin-antitoxin system as a native defence element against RNA phages}},
  doi          = {10.1098/rsbl.2025.0080},
  volume       = {21},
  year         = {2025},
}

@article{11713,
  abstract     = {Objective: MazF is a sequence-specific endoribonuclease-toxin of the MazEF toxin–antitoxin system. MazF cleaves single-stranded ribonucleic acid (RNA) regions at adenine–cytosine–adenine (ACA) sequences in the bacterium Escherichia coli. The MazEF system has been used in various biotechnology and synthetic biology applications. In this study, we infer how ectopic mazF overexpression affects production of heterologous proteins. To this end, we quantified the levels of fluorescent proteins expressed in E. coli from reporters translated from the ACA-containing or ACA-less messenger RNAs (mRNAs). Additionally, we addressed the impact of the 5′-untranslated region of these reporter mRNAs under the same conditions by comparing expression from mRNAs that comprise (canonical mRNA) or lack this region (leaderless mRNA).
Results: Flow cytometry analysis indicates that during mazF overexpression, fluorescent proteins are translated from the canonical as well as leaderless mRNAs. Our analysis further indicates that longer mazF overexpression generally increases the concentration of fluorescent proteins translated from ACA-less mRNAs, however it also substantially increases bacterial population heterogeneity. Finally, our results suggest that the strength and duration of mazF overexpression should be optimized for each experimental setup, to maximize the heterologous protein production and minimize the amount of phenotypic heterogeneity in bacterial populations, which is unfavorable in biotechnological processes.},
  author       = {Nikolic, Nela and Sauert, Martina and Albanese, Tanino G. and Moll, Isabella},
  issn         = {1756-0500},
  journal      = {BMC Research Notes},
  keywords     = {General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology, General Medicine},
  publisher    = {Springer Nature},
  title        = {{Quantifying heterologous gene expression during ectopic MazF production in Escherichia coli}},
  doi          = {10.1186/s13104-022-06061-9},
  volume       = {15},
  year         = {2022},
}