Abstract
Trypanosoma cruzi is the causative agent of Chagas disease, which affects more than 9 million people in Latin America. We have generated a draft genome sequence of the TcI strain Sylvio X10/1 and compared it to the TcVI reference strain CL Brener to identify lineage-specific features. We found virtually no differences in the core gene content of CL Brener and Sylvio X10/1 by presence/absence analysis, but 6 open reading frames from CL Brener were missing in Sylvio X10/1. Several multicopy gene families, including DGF, mucin, MASP and GP63 were found to contain substantially fewer genes in Sylvio X10/1, based on sequence read estimations. 1,861 small insertion-deletion events and 77,349 nucleotide differences, 23% of which were non-synonymous and associated with radical amino acid changes, further distinguish these two genomes. There were 336 genes indicated as under positive selection, 145 unique to T. cruzi in comparison to T. brucei and Leishmania. This study provides a framework for further comparative analyses of two major T. cruzi lineages and also highlights the need for sequencing more strains to understand fully the genomic composition of this parasite.
Highlights
The protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, causative agent of Chagas disease, infects 7.7 million people in Latin America and causes 12,500 deaths annually [1]
We found that the core gene content of the two T. cruzi lineages is highly similar, but that they harbor large differences in repetitive content and sequence, which may have functional and epidemiological implications
We conducted a comparison to the genome of the reference strain CL Brener (TcVI)
Summary
The protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, causative agent of Chagas disease, infects 7.7 million people in Latin America and causes 12,500 deaths annually [1]. Transmission of the parasite most commonly occurs if infected faeces of the haematophagous triatomine insect vector makes contact with mucosae or abraded skin. There is no vaccine against T. cruzi infections and drug treatment is restricted to a small number of drugs with insufficient efficacy and potentially harmful side effects. Multiple genotyping strategies support the subdivision of T. cruzi into six major phylogenetic groups, recently renamed discrete typing units (DTUs) I-VI by international consensus [2]. DTU distribution can be loosely defined by several parameters including ecology, vector and host preference, geography and disease association [3], patchy sampling precludes definitive associations. Genome sequencing can provide crucial data to facilitate such research
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