Bakyt B. Atshabar

TL;DR: The authors argue that plague should be taken much more seriously by the international health community and the government should take plague more seriously.

TL;DR: This study is the first to demonstrate that variable-number tandem repeats in the Y. pestis genome can link human case isolates to those obtained from suspected environmental sources of infection, and demonstrates the valuable utility of VNTR markers in epidemiological investigations of naturally occurring plague and the forensic analysis of possible bioterrorism events.

TL;DR: There were no spatial patterns to suggest that family groups in close proximity to infected burrow systems were more at risk of infection than those far away, and it was useful to consider the burrow system as the unit of study within a much larger metapopulation.

TL;DR: The burrow maps provide realistic patterns to study the spread and persistence of plague and a multi-scale object-based stratification approach improved accuracy of classification of burrows.

TL;DR: Diversity in these isolates suggests that they may no longer represent the wild-type organism phenotypically, including the possibility of altered pathogenicity, and indicates higher genetic diversity among older biovars.