Molecular kinetics dictate population dynamics in CRISPR-based plasmid defense

Understanding and manipulating the spread of mobile genetic elements represents a great challenge with potential benefits across synthetic biology, agriculture, and medicine. A key part of this challenge is the multiple scales in play, from the molecular kinetics of defense systems such as CRISPR-Cas, to single-cell variability in immunity levels, to spatial structure in bacterial populations. In this work, we use a time-lapse, imaging-based approach to characterize conjugative plasmid dynamics