{"id":245474,"date":"2026-10-16T01:36:48","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T06:36:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/molecular-snapshots-reveal-how-viral-enzymes-switch-between-inserting-and-removing-dna"},"modified":"2026-10-16T01:36:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T06:36:48","slug":"molecular-snapshots-reveal-how-viral-enzymes-switch-between-inserting-and-removing-dna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/molecular-snapshots-reveal-how-viral-enzymes-switch-between-inserting-and-removing-dna","title":{"rendered":"Molecular snapshots reveal how viral enzymes switch between inserting and removing DNA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/molecular-snapshots-reveal-how-viral-enzymes-switch-between-inserting-and-removing-dna.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Bacteriophages, or viruses that infect bacteria, have a fiendishly simple purpose in life: attach to a bacterial cell, inject their DNA and then use the host\u2019s genetic machinery to reproduce. In doing so, they may have evolved some of the most efficient gene-editing tools ever seen in nature.<\/p>\n<p>New research by scientists at the University of Chicago shows how bacteriophages (\u201cphages\u201d for short) use a special class of enzymes to recognize specific DNA sequences in their host and insert large stretches of their own DNA with remarkable precision.<\/p>\n<p>The study also shows how these enzymes can switch directions and remove the phage DNA without a trace, offering new insights that could help scientists develop more precise tools for genome engineering and synthetic biology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bacteriophages, or viruses that infect bacteria, have a fiendishly simple purpose in life: attach to a bacterial cell, inject their DNA and then use the host\u2019s genetic machinery to reproduce. In doing so, they may have evolved some of the most efficient gene-editing tools ever seen in nature. New research by scientists at the University [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1902,11,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bioengineering","category-biotech-medical","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245474\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}