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Nature 413, 467-470 (4 October 2001) | doi:10.1038/35097178

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Bacterial genomics: A plague o' both your hosts

Stewart T. Cole1,2 & Carmen Buchrieser1,3

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The genome of the bacterium that causes plague is highly dynamic, and scarred by genes acquired from other organisms. Does this explain its ability to kill both mammals and insects?

The course of human evolution has been shaped by three major factors: natural disasters, wars and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, syphilis, typhus and cholera. In the past few years the darkest secrets of the bacteria responsible for each of these diseases have been unveiled by genomics, and on page 523 of this issue1 Parkhill and colleagues describe the latest subject of this approach — Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague.

  1. Stewart T. Cole is in the Unité de Génétique Moléculaire Bactérienne, and Carmen Buchrieser is in the Laboratoire de Génomique des Microorganismes Pathogènes, Institut Pasteur, 28 rue du Docteur Roux, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France.
  2. e-mail: Email: stcole@pasteur.fr
  3. e-mail: Email: cbuch@pasteur.fr