Yersinia enterocolitica subsp. enterocolitica 8081

Yersinia enterocolitica is a mammalian gastrointestinal pathogen composed of six biotypes. The biotypes group into three types of pathogen; mouse nonpathogens (biotype 1A), weak mouse pathogens (biotypes 2-5) and a mouse-lethal group (biotype 1B), of which this strain is a member. Biotype 1B is a primarily New World strain. Y.enterocolitica and Y.pseudotuberculosis are thought to have diverged in the last 200 million years, while it has been proposed that Y.pestis (the causative agent of plague) evolved from Y.pseudotuberculosis 1,500-20,000 years ago. Y.pseudotuberculosis and Y.pestis cause more severe clinical symptoms than Y.enterocolitica. The availability of representatives of all three Yersinia species has allowed comparison of gene loss and acquisitions since they diverged. It seems that despite both being enteric pathogens, Y.enterocolitica and Y.pseudotuberculosis occupy different niches as seen by differential losses of presumably adaptive functions such as cellulose biosynthetic genes (present only in Y. enterocolitica) and osmoregulated periplasmic glucan biosynthetic pathway (probably not succinylated in Y.pseudotuberculosis). Like all Yersinia, Y.enterocolitica has an approximately 70 kb virulence plasmid. (EBI Integr8)