Marta Siborova
(ILF, University of Copenhagen)
Ubiquitination is a central regulatory mechanism in eukaryotic cell biology, governing processes ranging from protein turnover to antiviral defence. In bacteria, conjugation of ubiquitin-like proteins (Ubls) is emerging as a core function of diverse antiviral systems, including systems with evolutionary links to the human antiviral ISG15 pathway. Recent work has uncovered a diverged bacterial ubiquitination system with altered conjugation chemistry, but its biological function has remained unclear. Here, we show that this non-canonical ubiquitination pathway provides robust defence against diverse bacteriophages. Combining genetic, bioinformatic and biochemical analyses, we demonstrate that Ubl modification of phage lateral tail fibres impairs virion assembly and infectivity. Together, our findings establish the immune function of a diverged ubiquitination pathway and reveal covalent remodelling of viral structural proteins as a conserved antiviral strategy deployed across chemically diverse ubiquitination systems and domains of life.
Dr
Huijuan Li
(ction of Microbiology, University of Copenhagen)
Marta Siborova
(ILF, University of Copenhagen)
Mr
Radvilas Bendorys
(LSC-EMBL, Life Sciences Center)
Dr
David Mayo-Muñoz
(Section for Microbial Ecology and Biotechnology, University of Copenhagen)
Johannes Anton Kühn
(Section of Microbiology, University of Copenhagen)
Dr
Victor Klein De Sousa
(Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, University of Copenhagen)
Dr
Ruilaing Zhao
(Section of Microbiology, University of Cop)
Mario Rodríguez Mestre
(Section of Microbiology, University of Copenhagen)
Leise Riber
(Section for Microbial Ecology and Biotechnology, University of Copenhagen)
Monika Jasnauskaitė
(LSC-EMBL, Life Sciences Center)
Gytis Dudas
(LSC-EMBL, Life Sciences Center)
Leighton Payne
(Section of Microbiology, University of Copenhagen)
Sarah Camara-Wilpert
(Section of Microbiology, University of Copenhagen)
Patrick Pausch
(LSC-EMBL, Life Sciences Center)
Prof.
Nicholas M. I. Taylor
(Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, University of Copenhagen)
Søren J. Sørensen
(Section of Microbiology, University of Copenhagen)
Rafael Pinilla-Redondo
(Section of Microbiology, University of Copenhagen)
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