How small genetic change in Yersinia pestis changed human history

Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - 11:50 in Health & Medicine

While studying Yersinia pestis, the bacteria responsible for epidemics of plague such as the Black Death, scientists found a single small genetic change that fundamentally influenced the evolution of the deadly pathogen, and thus the course of human history. They demonstrated how the acquisition of a single gene caused the shift of Y. pestis from causing a primarily gastrointestinal infection to a more serious and often fatal respiratory disease and how later modifications lead to infections associated with the bubonic plague.

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