The many and varied niches occupied by Yersinia pestis as an arthropod-vectored zoonotic pathogen.

Yersinia pestis, the causative agent of bubonic and pneumonic plague, has a complex lifestyle, cycling between both arthropod and mammalian hosts. This pathogen has previously been shown to survive intracellularly within macrophages and to be capable of biofilm formation within the flea, suggesting the development of a range of strategies to ensure survival throughout its life cycle, including expression of virulence factors and tight regulation of its genes.