Phages alter host metabolism to escape bacterial defenses

The evolutionary arm race between phages and bacteria results in the continuous development of new defense and anti-defense strategies. Whereas restriction/modification and CRISPR-Cas have been widely studied as bacterial defense mechanisms, recent studies show that bacteria use a plethora of new mechanisms to combat phage infections. Some of these new systems were shown to defend by manipulating cellular metabolites such that the phage cannot access central building blocks for its replication. In the current study, we show that phages can alter the host metabolism to render bacterial defenses inactive.