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. 2017 Oct 26;12(10):e0187230.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187230. eCollection 2017.

Yersinia pestis strains of ancient phylogenetic branch 0.ANT are widely spread in the high-mountain plague foci of Kyrgyzstan

Galina A Eroshenko  1 , Nikita Yu Nosov  1 , Yaroslav M Krasnov  1 , Yevgeny G Oglodin  1 , Lyubov M Kukleva  1 , Natalia P Guseva  1 , Alexander A Kuznetsov  1 , Sabyrzhan T Abdikarimov  2 , Aigul K Dzhaparova  2 , Vladimir V Kutyrev  1
Affiliations

Yersinia pestis strains of ancient phylogenetic branch 0.ANT are widely spread in the high-mountain plague foci of Kyrgyzstan

Galina A Eroshenko et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Fifty six Yersinia pestis strains, isolated over the period of more than 50 years in three high-mountain foci of Kyrgyzstan (Tien Shan, Alai, and Talas), have been characterized by means of PCR and single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) typing methods. Seven of these strains were also characterized by means of whole genome sequencing and genome-wide SNP phylogenetic analysis. It was found that forty two strains belong to 0.ANT2, 0.ANT3 and 0.ANT5 phylogenetic branches. From these, strains of 0.ANT2 and 0.ANT3 branches were earlier detected in China only, whereas 0.ANT5 phylogenetic branch was identified for Y. pestis phylogeny for the first time. According to the results of genome-wide SNP analysis, 0.ANT5 strains are ones of the most closely related to Y. pestis strain responsible for the Justinianic Plague. We have also found out that four of the studied strains belong to the phylogenetic branch 2.MED1, and ten strains from Talas high-mountain focus belong to the phylogenetic branch 0.PE4 (sub-branch 0.PE4t). Established diversity of Y. pestis strains and extensive dissemination of the strains pertaining to the 0.ANT branch confirm the antiquity of the mentioned above plague foci and suggest that strains of the 0.ANT branch, which serve as precursors for all highly virulent Y. pestis strains, had their origin in the Tien Shan mountains.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Natural plague foci of Kyrgyzstan and distribution of Yersinia pestis strains of different phylogenetic branches across these foci.
The geographical location of strains of the 0.ANT1, 0.ANT2 and 0.ANT3 branches in the territory of China are taken from [5]. When preparing this figure a map from OpenStreetMap site was used (www.openstreetmap.org/copyright).
Fig 2
Fig 2. Phylogenetic analysis of Yersinia pestis strains from high-mountain foci of Kyrgyzstan based on 2493core SNPs of 37 strains of global origin.
Maximum Likelihood tree is constructed using PHYML 3.1 with the HKY85 model and 500 bootstrap replications. Six Y. pestis genomes from plague foci of Kyrgyzstan and one genome from plague focus of Tajikistan, sequenced in this study, are marked with colored triangles. The names of these strains are circled with colored frames.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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