Comparative genomics of Tunisian Leishmania major isolates causing human cutaneous leishmaniasis with contrasting clinical severity.

Comparative genomics of Tunisian Leishmania major isolates causing human cutaneous leishmaniasis with contrasting clinical severity. Infect Genet Evol. 2016 Nov 3;: Authors: Ghouila A, Guerfali FZ, Atri C, Bali A, Attia H, Sghaier RM, Mkannez G, Dickens NJ, Laouini D Abstract Zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania (L.) major parasites affects urban and suburban areas in the center and south of Tunisia where the disease is endemo-epidemic. Several cases were reported in human patients for which infection due to L. major induced lesions with a broad range of severity. However, very little is known about the mechanisms underlying this diversity. Our hypothesis is that parasite genomic variability could, in addition to the host immunological background, contribute to the intra-species clinical variability observed in patients and explain the lesion size differences observed in the experimental model. Based on several epidemiological, in vivo and in vitro experiments, we focused on two clinical isolates showing contrasted severity in patients and BALB/c experimental mice model. We used DNA-seq as a high-throughput technology to facilitate the identification of genetic variants with discriminating potential between both isolates. Our results demonstrate that various levels of heterogeneity could be found between both L. major isolates in terms of chromosome or gene copy number variation (CNV), and that the intra-species dive...
Source: Infection, Genetics and Evolution - Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Authors: Tags: Infect Genet Evol Source Type: research