Yersinia pestis is a gram-negative, non-motile, coccobacillus bacterium without spores that is related to both Yersinia enterocolitica and Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, the pathogen from which Y. pestis evolved and responsible for the Far East scarlet-like fever. It is a facultative anaerobic organism that can infect humans via the Oriental rat flea. It causes the disease plague, which caused the Plague of Justinian and the Black Death, the deadliest pandemic in recorded history. Plague takes three main forms: pneumonic, septicemic, and bubonic. Yersinia pestis is a parasite of its host, the rat flea, which is also a parasite of rats, hence Y. pestis is a hyperparasite.
Yersinia pestis
Oriental rat flea (Xenopsylla cheopis) infected with the Y. pestis bacterium, which appears as a dark mass in the gut: The foregut (proventriculus) of this flea is blocked by a Y. pestis biofilm; when the flea attempts to feed on an uninfected host, Y. pestis is regurgitated into the wound, causing infection.
Gram-negative bacteria are bacteria that unlike gram-positive bacteria do not retain the crystal violet stain used in the Gram staining method of bacterial differentiation. Their defining characteristic is their cell envelope, which consists of a thin peptidoglycan cell wall sandwiched between an inner (cytoplasmic) membrane and an outer membrane. These bacteria are found in all environments that support life on Earth.
Microscopic image of gram-negative Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria (pink-red rods)