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The system that invents DNA sequences on the fly to block the phage.
RT bactérienne non-canonique qui, en réponse au phage, synthétise un long poly(A) toxique ou un ADN décoy. DRT3 a un domaine catalytique homologue à TERT humain (télomérase) — cible oncologique majeure (~90 % des tumeurs surexpriment TERT).
When you learn molecular biology, you memorize one rule: DNA replicates with a DNA polymerase that copies DNA, and only retroviruses flip that around with a reverse transcriptase (RT) that copies RNA into DNA. Bacteria kept this trick. DRT (Defense-associated Reverse Transcriptase) embeds its own RT which, upon infection, uses a non-coding RNA as a template to synthesize new DNA that blocks phage replication. The DRT3 subtype, characterized in 2026 by Wilkinson et al. in Science, synthesizes precise dinucleotide repeats — the first anti-phage polymerase capable of this kind of combinatorial precision.
If the fold analogy holds up, we have a new structural source for oncology-grade telomerase inhibitors. DRT3 is also a potentially revolutionary molecular biology tool: "programming" a bacterial RT to synthesize a specific DNA on demand.
The DRT family is the likely ancestor of human telomerase (TERT), which also synthesizes repeats via reverse transcription to preserve the ends of our chromosomes. If you inhibit telomerase, you go after cancer. The catalytic fold conserved between DRT3 and TERT potentially opens an alternative template for anti-telomerase inhibitors.
