Abstract
BackgroundThe human parasite Leishmania (V.) panamensis is one of the pathogenic species responsible for cutaneous leishmaniasis in Central and South America. Despite its importance in molecular parasitology, its mitochondrial genome, divided into minicircles and maxicircles, haven’t been described so far.MethodsUsing NGS-based sequencing (454 and ILLUMINA), and combining de novo genome assembly and mapping strategies, we report the maxicircle kDNA annotated genome of L. (V.) panamensis, the first reference of this molecule for the subgenus Viannia. A comparative genomics approach is performed against other Leishmania and Trypanosoma species.ResultsThe results show synteny of mitochondrial genes of L. (V.) panamensis with other kinetoplastids. It was also possible to identify nucleotide variants within the coding regions of the maxicircle, shared among some of them and others specific to each strain. Furthermore, we compared the minicircles kDNA sequences of two strains and the results show that the conserved and divergent regions of the minicircles exhibit strain-specific associations.
Highlights
The mitochondrial DNA of kinetoplastid parasites can represent as much as 20–25% of the total amount of DNA per cell (De Souza, 2002) and consists of two classes of circular molecules that form a dense concatenated network
The final L. (V.) panamensis maxicircle molecule was corrected using the whole Illumina HiSeq dataset with iCORN
The assembled 19,4 kb L. (V.) panamensis maxicircle is shorter than the 21 kb previously reported for L. tarentolae and the partial 20 kb reported for the maxicircle of L. donovani (Nebohacova et al, 2009)
Summary
The mitochondrial DNA of kinetoplastid parasites (kDNA) can represent as much as 20–25% of the total amount of DNA per cell (De Souza, 2002) and consists of two classes of circular molecules that form a dense concatenated network. Mitochondrial genomics of human pathogenic parasite Leishmania (Viannia) panamensis. The remaining genes are annotated as MURF2, MURF5, G3, and G4 (Lin et al, 2015; Bhat et al, 1990; Simpson, 1986; De la Cruz, Neckelmann & Simpson, 1984) The synteny of these genes is highly conserved among kinetoplastids of the genera Trypanosoma, Leishmania, and Leptomonas (Westenberger et al, 2006; Yatawara et al, 2008). Twelve of these genes are cryptogenes, whose transcripts need to be edited in order to be properly translated. We compared the minicircles kDNA sequences of two strains and the results show that the conserved and divergent regions of the minicircles exhibit strain-specific associations
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