The disease

The Leishmania parasite is an intracellular pathogen of the immune system targeting macrophages and dendritic cells. The disease Leishmaniasis affects the populations of 88 counties worldwide with symptoms ranging from disfiguring cutaneous and muco-cutaneous lesions that can cause widespread destruction of mucous membranes to visceral disease affecting the haemopoetic organs.

For more information/stats, etc., we recommend the WHO web site.

The genome

The L. major Friedlin genome is 32.8Mb in size, with a karyotype of 36 chromosomes. The G+C content is approximately 63%.

The project

The Pathogen Genomics group at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute has played a major role in the genome sequencing of Leishmania major. Details of all centres involved, and who sequenced which chromosome, are given here.

The sequence data were obtained by adopting several parallel approaches, including complete cosmid sequencing, whole chromosome shotguns and/or BAC sequencing/skimming.

Project status: sequencing complete, 2 small gaps remaining.

Latterly, the PSU has also undertaken whole genome shotguns, to ~5x coverage, of both Leishmania infantum and Leishmania braziliensis.

The sequences

Sequences that have been submitted to the public databases are detailed here. Please note that all data are available from the ftp site, and that both manual or automatic annotation of the genome is available in GeneDB.