Yersinia pestis Orientalis in remains of ancient plague patients.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Drancourt M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC2725862 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Similar Datasets
Project description:Three pandemics have been attributed to plague in the last 1,500 years. Yersinia pestis caused the third, and its DNA was found in human remains from the second. The Antiqua biovar of Y. pestis may have caused the first pandemic; the other two biovars, Medievalis and Orientalis, may have caused the second and third pandemics, respectively. To test this hypothesis, we designed an original genotyping system based on intergenic spacer sequencing called multiple spacer typing (MST). We found that MST differentiated every biovar in a collection of 36 Y. pestis isolates representative of the three biovars. When MST was applied to dental pulp collected from remains of eight persons who likely died in the first and second pandemics, this system identified original sequences that matched those of Y. pestis Orientalis. These data indicate that Y. pestis caused cases of Justinian plague. The two historical plague pandemics were likely caused by Orientalis-like strains.
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Project description:The plague agent Yersinia pestis persists for years in the soil. Two millennia after swiping over Europe and North Africa, plague established permanent foci in North Africa but not in neighboring Europe. Mapping human plague foci reported in North Africa for 70 years indicated a significant location at <3 kilometers from the Mediterranean seashore or the edge of salted lakes named chotts. In Algeria, culturing 352 environmental specimens naturally containing 0.5 to 70 g/L NaCl yielded one Y. pestis Orientalis biotype isolate in a 40 g/L NaCl chott soil specimen. Core genome SNP analysis placed this isolate within the Y. pestis branch 1, Orientalis biovar. Culturing Y. pestis in broth steadily enriched in NaCl indicated survival up to 150 g/L NaCl as L-form variants exhibiting a distinctive matrix assisted laser desorption-ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry peptide profile. Further transcriptomic analyses found the upregulation of several outer-membrane proteins including TolC efflux pump and OmpF porin implied in osmotic pressure regulation. Salt tolerance of Y. pestis L-form may play a role in the maintenance of natural plague foci in North Africa and beyond, as these geographical correlations could be extended to 31 plague foci in the northern hemisphere (from 15°N to 50°N).
| S-EPMC5214965 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Plague is a widespread zoonotic disease that is caused by Yersinia pestis and has had devastating effects on the human population throughout history. Disappearance of the disease is unlikely due to the wide range of mammalian hosts and their attendant fleas. The flea/rodent life cycle of Y. pestis, a gram-negative obligate pathogen, exposes it to very different environmental conditions and has resulted in some novel traits facilitating transmission and infection. Studies characterizing virulence determinants of Y. pestis have identified novel mechanisms for overcoming host defenses. Regulatory systems controlling the expression of some of these virulence factors have proven quite complex. These areas of research have provide new insights into the host-parasite relationship. This review will update our present understanding of the history, etiology, epidemiology, clinical aspects, and public health issues of plague.
| S-EPMC172914 | biostudies-other
Project description:Yersinia pestis, the etiologic agent of the disease plague, has been implicated in three historical pandemics. These include the third pandemic of the 19(th) and 20(th) centuries, during which plague was spread around the world, and the second pandemic of the 14(th)-17(th) centuries, which included the infamous epidemic known as the Black Death. Previous studies have confirmed that Y. pestis caused these two more recent pandemics. However, a highly spirited debate still continues as to whether Y. pestis caused the so-called Justinianic Plague of the 6(th)-8(th) centuries AD. By analyzing ancient DNA in two independent ancient DNA laboratories, we confirmed unambiguously the presence of Y. pestis DNA in human skeletal remains from an Early Medieval cemetery. In addition, we narrowed the phylogenetic position of the responsible strain down to major branch 0 on the Y. pestis phylogeny, specifically between nodes N03 and N05. Our findings confirm that Y. pestis was responsible for the Justinianic Plague, which should end the controversy regarding the etiology of this pandemic. The first genotype of a Y. pestis strain that caused the Late Antique plague provides important information about the history of the plague bacillus and suggests that the first pandemic also originated in Asia, similar to the other two plague pandemics.
| S-EPMC3642051 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The Gram-negative bacterium Yersinia pestis is responsible for deadly plague, a zoonotic disease established in stable foci in the Americas, Africa, and Eurasia. Its persistence in the environment relies on the subtle balance between Y. pestis-contaminated soils, burrowing and nonburrowing mammals exhibiting variable degrees of plague susceptibility, and their associated fleas. Transmission from one host to another relies mainly on infected flea bites, inducing typical painful, enlarged lymph nodes referred to as buboes, followed by septicemic dissemination of the pathogen. In contrast, droplet inhalation after close contact with infected mammals induces primary pneumonic plague. Finally, the rarely reported consumption of contaminated raw meat causes pharyngeal and gastrointestinal plague. Point-of-care diagnosis, early antibiotic treatment, and confinement measures contribute to outbreak control despite residual mortality. Mandatory primary prevention relies on the active surveillance of established plague foci and ectoparasite control. Plague is acknowledged to have infected human populations for at least 5,000 years in Eurasia. Y. pestis genomes recovered from affected archaeological sites have suggested clonal evolution from a common ancestor shared with the closely related enteric pathogen Yersinia pseudotuberculosis and have indicated that ymt gene acquisition during the Bronze Age conferred Y. pestis with ectoparasite transmissibility while maintaining its enteric transmissibility. Three historic pandemics, starting in 541 AD and continuing until today, have been described. At present, the third pandemic has become largely quiescent, with hundreds of human cases being reported mainly in a few impoverished African countries, where zoonotic plague is mostly transmitted to people by rodent-associated flea bites.
| S-EPMC7920731 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC2953993 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of plague, has been prevalent among humans for at least 5000 years, being accountable for several devastating epidemics in history, including the Black Death. Analyses of the genetic diversity of ancient strains of Y. pestis have shed light on the mechanisms of evolution and the spread of plague in Europe. However, many questions regarding the origins of the pathogen and its long persistence in Europe are still unresolved, especially during the late medieval time period. To address this, we present four newly assembled Y. pestis genomes from Eastern Europe (Poland and Southern Russia), dating from the fifteenth to eighteenth century AD. The analysis of polymorphisms in these genomes and their phylogenetic relationships with other ancient and modern Y. pestis strains may suggest several independent introductions of plague into Eastern Europe or its persistence in different reservoirs. Furthermore, with the reconstruction of a partial Y. pestis genome from rat skeletal remains found in a Polish ossuary, we were able to identify a potential animal reservoir in late medieval Europe. Overall, our results add new information concerning Y. pestis transmission and its evolutionary history in Eastern Europe. This article is part of the theme issue 'Insights into health and disease from ancient biomolecules'.
| S-EPMC7702796 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The association of historical plague pandemics with Yersinia pestis remains controversial, partly because the evolutionary history of this largely monomorphic bacterium was unknown. The microevolution of Y. pestis was therefore investigated by three different multilocus molecular methods, targeting genomewide synonymous SNPs, variation in number of tandem repeats, and insertion of IS100 insertion elements. Eight populations were recognized by the three methods, and we propose an evolutionary tree for these populations, rooted on Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. The tree invokes microevolution over millennia, during which enzootic pestoides isolates evolved. This initial phase was followed by a binary split 6,500 years ago, which led to populations that are more frequently associated with human disease. These populations do not correspond directly to classical biovars that are based on phenotypic properties. Thus, we recommend that henceforth groupings should be based on molecular signatures. The age of Y. pestis inferred here is compatible with the dates of historical pandemic plague. However, it is premature to infer an association between any modern molecular grouping and a particular pandemic wave that occurred before the 20th century.
| S-EPMC535704 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Yersinia pestis is perhaps the most feared infectious agent due to its ability to cause epidemic outbreaks of plague disease in animals and humans with high mortality. Plague infections elicit strong humoral immune responses against the capsular antigen (fraction 1 [F1]) of Y. pestis, and F1-specific antibodies provide protective immunity. Here we asked whether Y. pestis generates mutations that enable bacterial escape from protective immunity and isolated a variant with an IS1541 insertion in caf1A encoding the F1 outer membrane usher. The caf1A::IS1541 insertion prevented assembly of F1 pili and provided escape from plague immunity via F1-specific antibodies without a reduction in virulence in mouse models of bubonic or pneumonic plague. F1-specific antibodies interfere with Y. pestis type III transport of effector proteins into host cells, an inhibitory effect that was overcome by the caf1A::IS1541 insertion. These findings suggest a model in which IS1541 insertion into caf1A provides for reversible changes in envelope structure, enabling Y. pestis to escape from adaptive immune responses and plague immunity.
| S-EPMC2681732 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Extinct lineages of Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of the plague, have been identified in several individuals from Eurasia between 5000 and 2500 years before present (BP). One of these, termed the 'LNBA lineage' (Late Neolithic and Bronze Age), has been suggested to have spread into Europe with human groups expanding from the Eurasian steppe. Here, we show that the LNBA plague was spread to Europe's northwestern periphery by sequencing three Yersinia pestis genomes from Britain, all dating to ~4000 cal BP. Two individuals were from an unusual mass burial context in Charterhouse Warren, Somerset, and one individual was from a single burial under a ring cairn monument in Levens, Cumbria. To our knowledge, this represents the earliest evidence of LNBA plague in Britain documented to date. All three British Yersinia pestis genomes belong to a sublineage previously observed in Bronze Age individuals from Central Europe that had lost the putative virulence factor yapC. This sublineage is later found in Eastern Asia ~3200 cal BP. While the severity of the disease is currently unclear, the wide geographic distribution within a few centuries suggests substantial transmissibility.
| S-EPMC10229654 | biostudies-literature