ArticleCell host & microbe2014
Retracing the evolutionary path that led to flea-borne transmission of Yersinia pestis.
Article in Cell host & microbe, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 80 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
80 citing papers in PubMed.
- Simulating the host niche: balancing complexity and control in the experimental evolution of antibiotic resistance and pathoadaptation.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2026Review
- A prehistoric East-Asian Yersinia pestis genome and a ~5.3 ka trans-Eurasian expansion of plague.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Emergence, global dispersal, and local adaptations ofApplied and environmental microbiology · 2026Review
- Previously Uncharacterised Aliphatic Amino Acid Positions Modulate the Apparent Catalytic Activity of the EAL Domain of ZMO_1055 and Other Cyclic Di-GMP-Specific EAL Phosphodiesterases.Microbial biotechnology · 2026Article
- Infectious bacteria as biological warfare agents: mechanisms, epidemiological threats, and defense strategies.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 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
- Retracing the path of evolution: polymorphisms ofEmerging microbes & infections · 2025Article
- Interaction of Bacteria and Fleas, Focusing on the Plague Bacterium-A Review.Microorganisms · 2025Review
- Article
- Article
- Evidence of a role for the F1 capsule ofmBio · 2025Article
- The polyadenylase PAPI is required for virulence plasmid maintenance in pathogenic bacteria.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Elucidation of peptide screen for targeted identification of Yersinia pestis by nano-liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Systematic analysis of spontaneous tandem genome amplification events in Yersinia pestis.PloS one · 2025Article
- The conserved global regulator H-NS has a strain-specific impact on biofilm formation inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Pathogenicity and virulence ofVirulence · 2024Review
- Neolithic Yersinia pestis infections in humans and a dog.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Unveiling the dance of evolution: Pla-mediated cleavage of Ymt modulates the virulence dynamics ofmBio · 2024Article
- Yersinia pestis can infect the Pawlowsky glands of human body lice and be transmitted by louse bite.PLoS biology · 2024Article
20 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Yersinia pestis is an arthropod-borne bacterial pathogen that evolved recently from Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, an enteric pathogen transmitted via the fecal-oral route. This radical ecological transition can be attributed to a few discrete genetic changes from a still-extant recent ancestor, thus providing a tractable case study in pathogen evolution and emergence. Here, we determined the genetic and mechanistic basis of the evolutionary adaptation of Y. pestis to flea-borne transmission. Remarkably, only four minor changes in the bacterial progenitor, representing one gene gain and three gene losses, enabled transmission by flea vectors. All three loss-of-function mutations enhanced cyclic-di-GMP-mediated bacterial biofilm formation in the flea foregut, which greatly increased transmissibility. Our results suggest a step-wise evolutionary model in which Y. pestis emerged as a flea-borne clone, with each genetic change incrementally reinforcing the transmission cycle. The model conforms well to the ecological theory of adaptive radiation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.