To survive bacteriophage (phage) infections, bacteria developed numerous anti-phage defence systems1–7. Some of them (for example, type III CRISPR–Cas, CBASS, Pycsar and Thoeris) consist of two modules: a sensor responsible for infection recognition and an effector that stops viral replication by destroying key cellular components8–12. In the Thoeris system, a Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR)-domain protein, ThsB, acts as a sensor that synthesizes an isomer of cyclic ADP ribose, 1′′−3′ glycocyclic ADP ribose (gcADPR), which is bound in the Smf/DprA-LOG (SLOG) domain of the ThsA effector and activates the silent information regulator 2 (SIR2)-domain-mediated hydrolysis of a key cell metabolite, NAD+ (refs. 12–14). Although the structure of ThsA has been solved15, the ThsA activation mechanism remained incompletely understood. Here we show that 1′′−3′ gcADPR, synthesized in vitro by the dimeric ThsB′ protein, binds to the ThsA SLOG domain, thereby activating ThsA by triggering helical filament assembly of ThsA tetramers. The cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) structure of activated ThsA revealed that filament assembly stabilizes the active conformation of the ThsA SIR2 domain, enabling rapid NAD+ depletion. Furthermore, we demonstrate that filament formation enables a switch-like response of ThsA to the 1′′−3′ gcADPR signal.
