Mouse Study: Just One Added Gene Needed To Turn Yersinia Pestis Bacterium Into A Killer

Mouse Study: Just One Added Gene Needed To Turn Yersinia Pestis Bacterium Into A Killer

The New York Times (7/7, D3, McNeil, Subscription Publication) reports that a genetic study involving mice and published last week in Nature Communications suggests that the Yersinia pestis bacterium, which was “responsible for the Black Death, probably caused small outbreaks of lung disease for many years before it evolved its better-known bubonic form.” The study also found that just “one added gene was needed to turn the Yersinia pestis bacterium into a killer, and only one tiny mutation in that gene was needed to give it two ways of spreading – by cough or by flea bite.”