Yersinia pestis

Yersinia pestis (formerly Pasteurella pestis) is a Gram-negative, nonmotile, rod-shaped, coccobacillus bacteria, with no spores. It is a facultative anaerobic organism that can infect humans via the Oriental rat flea. It causes the disease plague, which takes three main forms: pneumonic, septicemic and bubonic plagues. All three forms were responsible for a number of high-mortality epidemics throughout human history, including: the sixth century's Plague of Justinian; the Black Death, which accounted for the death of at least one-third of the European population between 1347 and 1353; the Great Plague of London of 1665 which was ended in 1666 by the Great Fire of London; and the Third Pandemic, sometimes referred to as the Modern Plague, which began in the late nineteenth century in China and spread by rats on steamboats, claiming close to 10,000,000 lives. These plagues likely originated in China and were transmitted west via trade routes. Recent research indicates that the pathogen may have been the cause of what is described as the Neolithic Decline, in which European populations declined significantly. This would push the date to much earlier and might be indicative of an origin in Europe rather than Eurasia. Y. pestis was discovered in 1894 by Alexandre Yersin, a Swiss/French physician and bacteriologist from the Pasteur Institute, during an epidemic of the plague in Hong Kong. Yersin was a member of the Pasteur school of thought. Kitasato Shibasaburō, a German-trained Japanese bacteriologist who practised Koch's methodology, was also engaged at the time in finding the causative agent of the plague. However, Yersin actually linked plague with Y. pestis. Named Pasteurella pestis in the past, the organism was renamed Yersinia pestis in 1944. Every year, thousands of cases of the plague are still reported to the World Health Organization, although with proper treatment, the prognosis for victims is now much better. A five- to six-fold increase in cases occurred in Asia during the time of the Vietnam War, possibly due to the disruption of ecosystems and closer proximity between people and animals. The plague is now commonly found in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar, areas which now account for over 95% of reported cases. The plague also has a detrimental effect on nonhuman mammals. In the United States, mammals such as the black-tailed prairie dog and the endangered black-footed ferret are under threat. Y. pestis is a nonmotile, stick-shaped, facultative anaerobic bacterium with bipolar staining (giving it a safety pin appearance) that produces an antiphagocytic slime layer. Similar to other Yersinia species, it tests negative for urease, lactose fermentation, and indole. The closest relative is the gastrointestinal pathogen Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, and more distantly Yersinia enterocolitica. The complete genomic sequence is available for two of the three subspecies of Y. pestis: strain KIM (of biovar Y. p. medievalis), and strain CO92 (of biovar Y. p. orientalis, obtained from a clinical isolate in the United States). As of 2006, the genomic sequence of a strain of biovar Antiqua has been recently completed. Similar to the other pathogenic strains, signs exist of loss of function mutations. The chromosome of strain KIM is 4,600,755 base pairs long; the chromosome of strain CO92 is 4,653,728 base pairs long. Like Y. pseudotuberculosis and Y. enterocolitica, Y. pestis is host to the plasmid pCD1. It also hosts two other plasmids, pPCP1 (also called pPla or pPst) and pMT1 (also called pFra) that are not carried by the other Yersinia species. pFra codes for a phospholipase D that is important for the ability of Y. pestis to be transmitted by fleas. pPla codes for a protease, Pla, that activates plasmin in human hosts and is a very important virulence factor for pneumonic plague. Together, these plasmids, and a pathogenicity island called HPI, encode several proteins that cause the pathogenesis, for which Y. pestis is famous. Among other things, these virulence factors are required for bacterial adhesion and injection of proteins into the host cell, invasion of bacteria in the host cell (via a type-III secretion system), and acquisition and binding of iron harvested from red blood cells (by siderophores). Y. pestis is thought to be descended from Y. pseudotuberculosis, differing only in the presence of specific virulence plasmids. A comprehensive and comparative proteomics analysis of Y. pestis strain KIM was performed in 2006. The analysis focused on the transition to a growth condition mimicking growth in host cells. Numerous bacterial small noncoding RNAs have been identified to play regulatory functions. Some can regulate the virulence genes. Some 63 novel putative sRNAs were identified through deep sequencing of the Y. pestis sRNA-ome. Among them was Yersinia-specific (also present in Y. pseudotuberculosis and Y. enterocolitica) Ysr141 (Yersinia small RNA 141). Ysr141 sRNA was shown to regulate the synthesis of the type III secretion system (T3SS) effector protein YopJ. The Yop-Ysc T3SS is a critical component of virulence for Yersinia species. Many novel sRNAs were identified from Y. pestis grown in vitro and in the infected lungs of mice suggesting they play role in bacterial physiology or pathogenesis. Among them sR035 predicted to pair with SD region and transcription initiation site of a thermo-sensitive regulator ymoA, and sR084 predicted to pair with fur, ferric uptake regulator. In the urban and sylvatic (forest) cycles of Y. pestis, most of the spreading occurs between rodents and fleas. In the sylvatic cycle, the rodent is wild, but in the urban cycle, the rodent is primarily the brown rat. In addition, Y. pestis can spread from the urban environment and back. Transmission to humans is usually through the bite of infected fleas. If the disease has progressed to the pneumonic form, humans can spread the bacterium to others by coughing, vomiting and possibly sneezing.