Abstract 1856 Investigating the structural mechanisms that underlie histone-mediated integration in archaeal CRISPR systems

DNA integration underpins some of the most important biological process in all forms of life – for example, adaptive immunity in bacteria and archaea, and V(D)J recombination and viral infection in humans. Archaea and bacteria use CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) systems to protect themselves from phage infection. To acquire immunity, the CRISPR-associated integrase complex (Cas1-Cas2) captures and integrates fragments of foreign nucleic acid as spacers into the host genome.