About
Retracing the global spread of Yersinia enterocolitica & the evolution of pathogenicity within its lineages, from a One Health perspective
Abstract:
The Yersinia species are instrumental models to investigate the emergence of pathogenicity in the bacterial world from a One-Health perspective. Indeed, they include environmental bacteria as well as food-born and vector-borne pathogens. Yersinia enterocolitica is a complex and poorly studied species which has reservoirs in wild and farm animals, and which is currently responsible for the third most common food-borne zoonosis in temperate countries. We propose to study the global spread of Y. enterocolitica and the evolution of pathogenicity within its lineages by characterizing, from a One-Health perspective, the Institut Pasteur collection of more than 37 000 specimens isolated from environmental, food, animal and human sources between 1932 and 2022 in more than 60 countries, covering all continents. By selecting and sequencing the genomes of 2 000 specific isolates from this collection, we will apply advanced bioinformatic methods to finely characterize the Y. enterocolitica species and its lineages from a genomic perspective, establishing whenever possible associations between lineages and niches/hosts/reservoirs as well as geographic locations. We will also investigate, at a global scale and at a local scale (France), anthropological variables that will confronted to the genomic data in order to understand the current distribution of Y. enterocolitica in the world, as well as the evolution of its pathogenicity potential.
