Leishmania major Assembly and Gene Annotation

About the Leishmania major genome

Leishmania is a Tryanosomatid protozoa and is the parasite responsible for the disease Leishmaniasia. Leishmania is transmitted by the bite of certain species of sand fly and affects the populations of 88 tropical and sub-tropical countries worldwide. The symptoms are cutaneous and muco-cutaneous lesions initially around the bite, the parasite can also migrate causing visceral leishmaniasis affecting the haemopoietic organs. The current genome corresponds to the Friedlin strain.

Assembly

The L. major (Friedlin strain) genome is 32.8Mb in size, with a karyotype of 36 chromosomes. The Pathogen Genomics group at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute played a major role by sequencing 24 of the chromosomes. The others were sequenced by SBRI (Seattle, USA) and EULEISH consortium. For further details about the sequencing of L. major see Ivens et al (2005)](http://europepmc.org/abstract/MED/16020728) [1]. Details of the centres involved and which chromosomes they sequenced, are given here. The sequence data were obtained by several parallel approaches, including complete cosmid sequencing, whole chromosome shotguns and/or BAC sequencing/skimming. The assembly is available from the EMBL/Genbank/DDBJ databases under the accession GCA_000002725.2

Annotation

The genome annotation for the Freidlin strain of the L. major genome has been derived from the data submitted to the ENA by GeneDB where the latest sequence data and annotation is constantly updated and enhanced by importing data from additional sources, principally UniProtKB and GOA. The GeneDB records were submitted by The Leishmania major Friedlin consortium which consists of The European Leishmania major Friedlin Genome Sequencing Consortium(EULEISH), the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute (SBRI), and The Sanger Institute.

References

1. The genome of the kinetoplastid parasite, Leishmania major.
   Ivens AC, Peacock CS, Worthey EA, Murphy L, Aggarwal G, Berriman M, Sisk E, Rajandream MA, Adlem E, Aert R et al. 2005. Science. 309:436-442.

Picture credit: Centre for Immunology and Infection, University of York

More information

General information about this species can be found in Wikipedia.