Scientists reveal evolutionary intricacies of Rickettsia pathogens

Scientists from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech and the University of Maryland School of Medicine have unveiled some of the evolutionary intricacies of rickettsial pathogens by analyzing over a decade’s worth of genomic data. Some species of Rickettsia are known to cause harmful diseases in humans, such as epidemic typhus (R. prowazekii) and Rocky Mountain spotted fever (R. rickettsii), while others have been identified as emerging pathogens and organisms that might possibly be used for the development of biological weapons.