The Genome of the Kinetoplastid Parasite, Leishmania major

Abstract

Leishmania species cause a spectrum of human diseases in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. We have sequenced the 36 chromosomes of the 32.8-megabase haploid genome of Leishmania major (Friedlin strain) and predict 911 RNA genes, 39 pseudogenes, and 8272 protein-coding genes, of which 36% can be ascribed a putative function. These include genes involved in host-pathogen interactions, such as proteolytic enzymes, and extensive machinery for synthesis of complex surface glycoconjugates. The organization of protein-coding genes into long, strand-specific, polycistronic clusters and lack of general transcription factors in the L. major, Trypanosoma brucei , and Trypanosoma cruzi (Tritryp) genomes suggest that the mechanisms regulating RNA polymerase II–directed transcription are distinct from those operating in other eukaryotes, although the trypanosomatids appear capable of chromatin remodeling. Abundant RNA-binding proteins are encoded in the Tritryp genomes, consistent with active posttranscriptional regulation of gene expression.

Autophagy and Related processes in Trypanosomatids: Insights from Genomic and Bioinformatic Analyses

“…Trypanosomatid sequences homologous to yeast proteins implicated in autophagy and related processes were initially sought using BLAST 19 against predicted proteins contained in versions 4, 3 and 3 of the L. major, 20 T. brucei 21 and T. cruzi 22 genome sequences. Where no hits resulted, the possibility of incorrect gene annotation was tested by additional BLAST searches against the various sources of nucleotide sequence data gathered at the GeneDB site (www.genedb.org; ref.…”

The direct route: a simplified pathway for protein import into the mitochondrion of trypanosomes

“…The genomes of T. brucei and two other trypanosomatids, Trypanosoma cruzi and Leishmania major, have been completely sequenced and a few highly-conserved components of their mitochondrial protein import machinery annotated [16,20,21]. A recent analysis, using advanced statistical models for sequence comparison has added further to our knowledge of the machinery [2].…”

Regulatory elements involved in the post-transcriptional control of stage-specific gene expression in Trypanosoma cruzi: a review

“…cruzi genome and gene expression mechanismsSequencing of the T. cruzi CL Brener diploid genome, estimated to be 110.7 Mb, was completed in 2005 (El-Sayed et al 2005a). Because it is a hybrid genome with a repetitive content of 50%, the CL Brener genome sequence has not been fully assembled and is instead represented by a redundant dataset distributed through several contigs, which is in contrast to the genomes of Trypanosoma brucei and Leishmania major that were published in the same issue of Science (Berriman et al 2005, Ivens et al 2005. Because homologous regions that display high levels of polymorphism were assembled separately, sequences from most of the genome are found in two contigs, each one corresponding to one haplotype (see www.…”