In parallel, Yulong Shen et al also found components of these machineries in S islandicus and you can also read their paper in BioRXiv
Really nice how they used a CRISPR plasmid to induce DNA damage

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

With these 2 new components we expand our knowledge of the response of Sulfolobus to dsDNA damage but there are still several questions remaining (and probably components missing), specially on the intriguing Ced system
Read more about it in our preprint www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

While UpsC has a characteristic pili like folding, CedD is homolog to VirD4, a protein that forms part of the conjugation machinery in bacteria
The Ced system is homologous to the conjugational machinery but acts in a different direction, by importing DNA

After the cells are in contact, the Ced system acts as an importer to bring DNA from the neighboring cell inside. This mechanism is independent of the Ups pili. Deletion of saci_0667 now cedD, avoids import of DNA, as it is the case for other deletion strains of Ced-sys

The Ups pili is in charge of creating cell-cell contact in a species-specific manner. When saci_1302, now upsC, is deleted, cells cannot form aggregates anymore

After UV light or damage to the dsDNA, Sulfolobus cells repair these damage by exchanging DNA between them and performing homologous recombination. Along side the previously known Ups and Ced genes, other genes are also up regulated as response