News

Over the course of human history, the three-micrometer-long Yersinia pestis—also known as the Black Death" or "Black Plague"—has claimed an estimated 200 million human lives, making it the most acute infectious disease during our species' short time on this planet. Although especially devastating in Europe during the mid-1300s, where it killed 50 million people alone, Y. pestis has been with us since at least the neolithic period (later mutations are what eventually made the bacterium super virulent and deadly)."