| Description: |
Yersinia pseudotuberculosis is a soil and water-borne bacterial pathogen that, with Y.pestis and Y. enterocolitica, causes worldwide infections in mammals. Y. pseudotuberculosis serotype O:1b is thought to be the direct evolutionary ancestor of Y. pestis, the causative agent of plague. While these two species diverged from one another within the last 20,000 y, the Y. pseudotuberculosis and Y. enterocolitica lineages separated between 0.4 and 1.9 million years ago. In man, different degrees of illness are observed, from fever and abdominal pain to septicemia.
Strain IP31758 was isolated in 1966 from a patient suffering from Far East scarlet-like fever (FESLF), in Primorski on the Pacific coast of the former Soviet Union. FESLF leads to severe clinical manifestations, including scarlet-like skin rash, from which this illness gets its name, and, most importantly, a toxic shock syndrome not seen in common pseudotuberculosis infections. Comparing Y.pseudotuberculosis IP31758 and IP32953 detected 260 strain-specific genes in IP31758 and introduces individual physiological capabilities and virulence determinants, with a significant proportion horizontally acquired that likely originated from Enterobacteriaceae and other soil-dwelling bacteria that persist in the same ecological niche. The mobile genome pool includes two novel plasmids phylogenetically unrelated to all currently reported Yersinia plasmids (modifed from PubMed 17784789). |
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