, Vector of Visceral Leishmaniasis, Using an Unbiased High-Throughput Approach

. This phlebotomine sandfly is only found in the New World, from Mexico to Argentina. In South America, migration and urbanisation have largely contributed to the increase of VL as a public health problem. Moreover, the first VL outbreak was recently reported in Argentina, which has already caused 7 deaths and 83 reported cases. have described gut bacteria using standard bacteriological methods. In this study, total RNA was extracted from the insects and submitted to high-throughput pyrosequencing. The analysis revealed the presence of sequences from bacteria, fungi, protist parasites, plants and metazoans. samples from endemic and non-endemic locations. A particular emphasis is being given to those species involved in the biological control of this vector and to the etiologic agents of animal and plant diseases