Yersinia pestis

Yersinia pestis
A scanning electron micrograph depicting a mass of Yersinia pestis bacteria in the foregut of an infected flea
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Bacteria
Phylum: Pseudomonadota
Class: Gammaproteobacteria
Order: Enterobacterales
Family: Yersiniaceae
Genus: Yersinia
Species:
Y. pestis
Binomial name
Yersinia pestis
(Lehmann & Neumann, 1896)
van Loghem, 1944
Synonyms
  • Bacille de la peste
    Yersin, 1894
  • Bacterium pestis
    Lehmann & Neumann, 1896
  • Pasteurella pestis
    (Lehmann & Neumann, 1896) The Netherlands, 1920

Yersinia pestis (Y. pestis; formerly Pasteurella pestis) is a gram-negative, non-motile, coccobacillus bacterium without spores that is related to both Yersinia enterocolitica and Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, the pathogen from which Y. pestis evolved[1][2] and responsible for the Far East scarlet-like fever. It causes the disease plague, which caused the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death, the deadliest pandemic in recorded history. Plague takes three main forms: pneumonic, septicemic, and bubonic. It is a facultative anaerobic organism that can infect humans primarily via the Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis), but also through airborne droplets for its pneumonic form.[3] Yersinia pestis is a parasite of its host, the rat flea, which is also a parasite of rats, hence Y. pestis is a hyperparasite.

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.[4][5] Yersin was a member of the Pasteur school of thought. Kitasato Shibasaburō, a Japanese bacteriologist who practised Koch's methodology, was also engaged at the time in finding the causative agent of the plague.[6] However, Yersin actually linked plague with a bacillus, initially named Pasteurella pestis; it was renamed Yersinia pestis in 1944.

Between one thousand and two thousand cases of the plague are still reported to the World Health Organization every year.[7] With proper antibiotic treatment, the prognosis for victims is much better than before antibiotics were developed. Cases in Asia increased five- to six-fold 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 that now account for over 95% of reported cases. The plague also has a detrimental effect on non-human mammals;[8] in the United States, these include the black-tailed prairie dog and the endangered black-footed ferret.

  1. ^ Achtman, Mark; Zurth, Kerstin; Morelli, Giovanna; Torrea, Gabriela; Guiyoule, Annie; Carniel, Elisabeth (1999-11-23). "Yersinia pestis, the cause of plague, is a recently emerged clone of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 96 (24): 14043–14048. Bibcode:1999PNAS...9614043A. doi:10.1073/pnas.96.24.14043. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 24187. PMID 10570195.
  2. ^ McNally, Alan; Thomson, Nicholas R.; Reuter, Sandra; Wren, Brendan W. (March 2016). "'Add, stir and reduce': Yersinia spp. as model bacteria for pathogen evolution" (PDF). Nature Reviews Microbiology. 14 (3): 177–190. doi:10.1038/nrmicro.2015.29. ISSN 1740-1534. PMID 26876035. S2CID 21267985.
  3. ^ Ryan, KJ; Ray, CG, eds. (2004). Sherris Medical Microbiology (4th ed.). McGraw Hill. pp. 484–88. ISBN 978-0-8385-8529-0.
  4. ^ Yersin, Alexandre (1894). "La peste bubonique à Hong-Kong". Annales de l'Institut Pasteur (in French). 8: 662–67.
  5. ^ Bockemühl, J (April 1994). "100 years after the discovery of the plague-causing agent—importance and veneration of Alexandre Yersin in Vietnam today". Immunitat und Infektion. 22 (2): 72–5. PMID 7959865.
  6. ^ Howard-Jones, N (1973). "Was Shibasaburo Kitasato the co-discoverer of the plague bacillus?". Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. 16 (2): 292–307. doi:10.1353/pbm.1973.0034. PMID 4570035. S2CID 31767623.
  7. ^ "Plague FAQ". CDC. 15 November 2021.
  8. ^ "The Plague", Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, October 2017 Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.

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