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Microbiology Society logo Microbiology

Volume 168, Issue 12

A comprehensive list of bacterial pathogens infecting humans Open Access

Abstract

There exists an enormous diversity of bacteria capable of human infection, but no up-to-date, publicly accessible list is available. Combining a pragmatic definition of pathogenicity with an extensive search strategy, we report 1513 bacterial pathogens known to infect humans described pre-2021. Of these, 73 % were regarded as established (have infected at least three persons in three or more references) and 27 % as putative (fewer than three known cases). Pathogen species belong to 10 phyla and 24 classes scattered throughout the bacterial phylogeny. We show that new human pathogens are discovered at a rapid rate. Finally, we discuss how our results could be expanded to a database, which could provide a useful resource for microbiologists. Our list is freely available and archived on GitHub and Zenodo and we have provided walkthroughs to facilitate access and use.

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  • Accepted:
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Keyword(s): bacteria , discovery , human pathogens , phylogenetic diversity and species diversity
Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Natural Environment Research Council (Award NE/R011524/1)
    • Principle Award Recipient: LukeLear
  • Natural Environment Research Council (Award NE/T008083/1)
    • Principle Award Recipient: MichielVos
© 2022 The Authors
  • This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.
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2022-12-09
2025-05-15
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/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001269
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A comprehensive list of bacterial pathogens infecting humans
Microbiology 168, 001269 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1099/mic.0.001269
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001269
/content/journal/micro/10.1099/mic.0.001269
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