ArticleInfection and immunity2009
The Yersinia pestis caf1M1A1 fimbrial capsule operon promotes transmission by flea bite in a mouse model of bubonic plague.
Article in Infection and immunity, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 papers.
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Who cites it
49 citing papers in PubMed, 79 citations in OpenAlex.
- Emergence, global dispersal, and local adaptations ofApplied and environmental microbiology · 2026Review
- Commentary on Seersholm Et al.: Yersinia pestis Infection Is Not Synonymous With Deadly Plague in Neolithic Scandinavia.American journal of biological anthropology · 2026Article
- Molecular turn inEmerging microbes & infections · 2025Article
- Evidence of a role for the F1 capsule ofmBio · 2025Article
- Multiplex PCR System for the Diagnosis of Plague.Current molecular medicine · 2025Review
- Progress on the research and development of plague vaccines with a call to action.NPJ vaccines · 2024Review
- Characterization of two affinity matured Anti-Yersinia pestis F1 human antibodies with medical countermeasure potential.PloS one · 2024Article
- Article
- A Role for Early-Phase Transmission in the Enzootic Maintenance of Plague.PLoS pathogens · 2022Article
- Emergence and spread of ancestralProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- A Novel Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Assay for Rapid Detection ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Deletion of Yersinia pestisJournal of bacteriology · 2021Article
- Antibiotic Therapy of Plague: A Review.Biomolecules · 2021Review
- Review
- A refined model of how Yersinia pestis produces a transmissible infection in its flea vector.PLoS pathogens · 2020Article
- Development of Anti-ImmunoTargets and therapy · 2020Article
- To block or not to block: The adaptive manipulation of plague transmission.Evolution letters · 2019Article
- Rapid and sensitive detection of Yersinia pestis by lateral-flow assay in simulated clinical samples.BMC infectious diseases · 2018Article
- A Bead-Based Flow Cytometric Assay for Monitoring Yersinia pestis Exposure in Wildlife.Journal of clinical microbiology · 2018Article
- One year immunogenicity and safety of subunit plague vaccine in Chinese healthy adults: An extended open-label study.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Plague is a zoonosis transmitted by fleas and caused by the gram-negative bacterium Yersinia pestis. During infection, the plasmidic caf1M1A1 operon that encodes the Y. pestis F1 protein capsule is highly expressed, and anti-F1 antibodies are protective. Surprisingly, the capsule is not required for virulence after injection of cultured bacteria, even though it is an antiphagocytic factor and capsule-deficient Y. pestis strains are rarely isolated. We found that a caf-negative Y. pestis mutant was not impaired in either flea colonization or virulence in mice after intradermal inoculation of cultured bacteria. In contrast, absence of the caf operon decreased bubonic plague incidence after a flea bite. Successful development of plague in mice infected by flea bite with the caf-negative mutant required a higher number of infective bites per challenge. In addition, the mutant displayed a highly autoaggregative phenotype in infected liver and spleen. The results suggest that acquisition of the caf locus via horizontal transfer by an ancestral Y. pestis strain increased transmissibility and the potential for epidemic spread. In addition, our data support a model in which atypical caf-negative strains could emerge during climatic conditions that favor a high flea burden. Human infection with such strains would not be diagnosed by the standard clinical tests that detect F1 antibody or antigen, suggesting that more comprehensive surveillance for atypical Y. pestis strains in plague foci may be necessary. The results also highlight the importance of studying Y. pestis pathogenesis in the natural context of arthropod-borne transmission.
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