Researchers from Danisco have published what it has described as groundbreaking research into microbial acquired immunity which could open new perspectives in the battle against viral infections.
Scientists from the food group’s Cultures Division have established for the first time the relationship between Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and resistance against bacterial viruses, known as bacteriophages. CRISPR form peculiar regions in the genome of numerous bacterial species.
“These results represent a long searched and entirely natural solution to bacteriophage for all culture-using industries where phage attacks are causing downgraded product batches and significantly reduced yield,” said Patrick Boyaval, innovation director at Dangé-Saint-Romain laboratories in France.
The research, details of which have been published in the journal Science, was carried out by an international team of Danisco scientists from its research facilities in France and the US, in collaboration with Sylvain Moineau’s research group from Université Laval, Canada.
Danisco said it planned to exploit these breakthrough findings on CRISPR and the related patent applications to develop food cultures with enhanced resistance to infections by bacteriophages.
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