Phage lysis-lysogeny switches and programmed cell death: Danse macabre

Exploration of immune systems in prokaryotes, such as restriction-modification or CRISPR-Cas, shows that both innate and adaptive systems possess programmed cell death (PCD) potential. The key outstanding question is how the immune systems sense and “predict” infection outcomes to “decide” whether to fight the pathogen or induce PCD. There is a striking parallel between this life-or-death decision faced by the cell and the decision by temperate viruses to protect or kill their hosts, epitomized by the lysis-lysogeny switch of bacteriophage Lambda. Immune systems and temperate phages sense the same molecular inputs, primarily, DNA damage, that determine whether the cell lives or dies. Because temperate (pro)phages are themselves components of prokaryotic genomes, their shared “interests” with the hosts result in coregulation of the lysis-lysogeny switch and immune systems that jointly provide the cell with the decision machinery to probe and predict infection outcomes, answering the life-or-death question.