Open AccessAnalysis of Yersinia pseudotuberculosis Isolates Recovered from Deceased Mammals of a German Zoo Animal Collection
Author(s) -
Jens A. Hammerl,
Nicole vom Ort,
Andrea Barać,
Claudia Jäckel,
Lisa Grund,
Sylvia Dreyer,
Carsten Heydel,
Annette Kuczka,
Heather Peters,
Stefan Hertwig
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of clinical microbiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.349
H-Index - 255
eISSN - 1070-633X
pISSN - 0095-1137
DOI - 10.1128/jcm.03125-20
Subject(s) - yersinia pseudotuberculosis , biology , virulence , serotype , plasmid , pathogenicity island , microbiology and biotechnology , pulsed field gel electrophoresis , yersinia , sequence analysis , prophage , genetics , gene , genotype , bacteria , escherichia coli , bacteriophage
Yersinia pseudotuberculosis is an important pathogen for both humans and animals. It can infect livestock, as well as pets and wild animals. During recent years, a number of reports have described the isolation of Y. pseudotuberculosis from zoo animals, mainly birds and mammals, for which the infection was mostly lethal. Between 2005 and 2019, there were at least 17 cases of deceased mammals, belonging to five different species, which suffered from a Y. pseudotuberculosis infection at the Zoo Wuppertal, Germany. Since only scarce information exists on the properties of Y. pseudotuberculosis from zoo animals, we characterized eight isolates, covering all infected species, in detail. All isolates were members of biotype 1, but belonged to five serotypes, five sequence types (STs), and seven core-genome multilocus sequence types (cgMLSTs). Using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) analysis and whole-genome sequencing (WGS), the seven isolates could be discriminated from each other. They differed significantly regarding their virulence genes and mobile genetic elements. While the virulence plasmid pYV existed in all serotypes (five isolates), a complete high-pathogenicity island (HPI) was detected only in the serotypes O:1a, O:1b, and O:13 (four isolates), but not in O:2a and O:2b. Similarly, the content of other plasmids and prophages varied greatly between the isolates. The data demonstrate that the deceased mammals were infected by seven individual isolates and not by a single type predominating in the zoo animals.