Volume 10, Number 9, September 2004

Genotyping, Orientalis-like Yersinia pestis, and Plague Pandemics

Michel Drancourt,* Véronique Roux,* La Vu Dang,* Lam Tran-Hung,* Dominique Castex,† Viviane Chenal-Francisque,‡ Hiroyuki Ogata,§ Pierre-Edouard Fournier,* Eric Crubézy,¶ and Didier Raoult*
*Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France; †Université de Bordeaux 1, Talence, France; ‡Institut Pasteur, Paris, France; §Information Génomique et Structurale, Marseille, France; and ¶Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France

Figure 2. Molecular detection of Yersinia pestis was achieved in the dental pulp of remains of humans excavated from one Justinian and two Black Death mass graves in France by spacer amplification and sequencing (+, positive polymerase chain reaction [PCR] amplification and sequencing; –, absence of PCR amplification; ND, not done). Sequence analyses showed strains were of Orientalis genotype in all sets of remains; one of them exhibited two mutations numbered according to Y. pestis CO92 strain genome sequence (GenBank accession no. NC-003143). Negative control teeth remained negative.

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This page last reviewed August 3, 2004

Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal
National Center for Infectious Diseases
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention