Homology analysis and cross-immunogenicity of OmpA from pathogenic Yersinia enterocolitica, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis and Yersinia pestis

•The OmpA gene (and protein) of three pathogenic Yersinia are highly conserved.•OmpA of Y. pestis remains unchanged among long time span and large geographic scope.•Each OmpA for pathogenic Yersinia has immunogenicity.•The OmpA for pathogenic Yersinia has cross-immunogenicity among each other.

The outer membrane protein A (OmpA) is one of the intra-species conserved proteins with immunogenicity widely found in the family of Enterobacteriaceae. Here we first confirmed OmpA is conserved in the three pathogenic Yersinia: Yersinia pestis, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis and pathogenic Yersinia enterocolitica, with high homology at the nucleotide level and at the amino acid sequence level. The identity of ompA sequences for 262 Y. pestis strains, 134 Y. pseudotuberculosis strains and 219 pathogenic Y. enterocolitica strains are 100%, 98.8% and 97.7% similar. The main pattern of OmpA of pathogenic Yersinia are 86.2% and 88.8% identical at the nucleotide and amino acid sequence levels, respectively. Immunological analysis showed the immunogenicity of each OmpA and cross-immunogenicity of OmpA for pathogenic Yersinia where OmpA may be a vaccine candidate for Y. pestis and other pathogenic Yersinia.