English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

The emergence of new pathogens is a major threat to public and veterinary health. Changes in bacterial habitat such as a switch in host or disease tropism are typically accompanied by genetic diversification.  Staphylococcus aureus  is a multi-host bacterial species associated with human and livestock infections. A microaerophilic subspecies,  Staphylococcus aureus  subsp.  anaerobius , is responsible for Morel’s disease, a lymphadenitis restricted to sheep and goats. However, the evolutionary history of  S .  aureus  subsp.  anaerobius  and its relatedness to  S .  aureus  are unknown. Population genomic analyses of clinical  S .  aureus  subsp.  anaerobius  isolates revealed a highly conserved clone that descended from a  S .  aureus  progenitor about 1000 years ago before differentiating into distinct lineages that contain African and European isolates.  S .  aureus  subsp.  anaerobius  has undergone limited clonal expansion, with a restricted population size, and an evolutionary rate 10-fold slower than  S .  aureus . The transition to its current restricted ecological niche involved acquisition of a pathogenicity island encoding a ruminant host-specific effector of abscess formation, large chromosomal re-arrangements, and the accumulation of at least 205 pseudogenes, resulting in a highly fastidious metabolism. Importantly, expansion of ~87 insertion sequences (IS) located largely in intergenic regions provided distinct mechanisms for the control of expression of flanking genes, including a novel mechanism associated with IS-mediated anti-anti-sense decoupling of ancestral gene repression. Our findings reveal the remarkable evolutionary trajectory of a host-restricted bacterial pathogen that resulted from extensive remodelling of the  S .  aureus  genome through an array of diverse mechanisms in parallel.

Radical genome remodelling accompanied the emergence of a novel host-restricted bacterial pathogen