Yersinia Infection Atlas

Yersinia pseudotuberculosis is a well-established model for studying both acute intestinal infection and bacterial persistence. After oral infection, it invades the intestinal mucosa, disseminates to gut-associated lymphoid tissues, and employs its type III secretion system (T3SS) to inject Yops into immune cells, suppressing host defenses and promoting survival. In murine models, the pathogen also establishes long-term persistence in cecal lymphoid tissues, where it undergoes extensive transcriptional and metabolic reprogramming, downregulating acute virulence genes while inducing pathways for stress resistance and nutrient adaptation (Avican et al., 2015). These features make Y. pseudotuberculosis an excellent model for investigating bacterial persistence and host adaptation. Within the DECIDE consortium, the Dersch and Saliba labs generated the first comprehensive Yersinia Atlas of the acute infection phase.