Bacterial genome is regulated by an ancient molecule
— Read on phys.org/news/2022-01-bacterial-genome-ancient-molecule.html

From this article:”The team’s recent work reveals how bacteria pull this off—using an ancient molecule found wherever there is life, called polyphosphate. The molecule was so important, says Jakob, that Nobel prize winner Arthur Kornberg spent the last 20 years of his career studying it.He found it plays a role in bacteria, in virulence, in stress responses, but could never figure out what exactly it was doing,” remarked Jakob. Jakob, Freddolino and their team found that this simple molecule targets a nucleoid-associated protein to the regions in the bacterial genome containing these problematic elements and suppresses their transcription.Remove the polyphosphate or the nucleoid-associated protein, said Jakob, and the bacteria suddenly mobilizes these prophages resulting in significant mutations.

“The bacteria can die very easily under those circumstances,” said Freddolino, “It’s an extremely important system that had not been appreciated until now.”