title: Genotyping, Orientalis-like Yersinia pestis, and plague pandemics.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France.
authors.forename: Michel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Drancourt
authors.forename: Véronique
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Roux
authors.forename: La Vu
authors.initials: LV
authors.lastname: Dang
authors.forename: Lam
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tran-Hung
authors.forename: Dominique
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Castex
authors.forename: Viviane
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Chenal-Francisque
authors.forename: Hiroyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ogata
authors.forename: Pierre-Edouard
authors.initials: PE
authors.lastname: Fournier
authors.forename: Eric
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Crubézy
authors.forename: Didier
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Raoult
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D021901:DNA, Intergenic / Q000235:genetics; D003782:Dental Pulp / Q000382:microbiology; D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000266:history*; D005814:Genes, Viral; D005838:Genotype; D014943:Global Health; D049690:History, Ancient; D049691:History, Medieval; D006801:Humans; D017720:Molecular Epidemiology; D009154:Mutation; D010802:Phylogeny; D010930:Plague / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000266:history / Q000382:microbiology*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods; D015010:Yersinia pestis / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D021901:DNA, Intergenic