Leishmania genomics: a brief account

Leishmaniasis, one of the neglected tropical diseases is serious health concern globally. The disease is caused by protozoan parasites belonging to genus Leishmania. The main forms of disease are Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL), Mucocutaneous Leishmaniasis and Visceral Leishmaniasis (VL). VL or Kala-azar is the most severe form and 90% of global VL cases occur in India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sudan, Ethiopia and Brazil, while most cases (70–75%) of CL occur in Afghanistan, Brazil, Iran, Ethiopia, Costa Rica and Peru etc. They are spread by the bites of female sand flies of the genus Phlebotomus in the Old World and of the genus Lutzomyia in the New World. It is essential to determine whether genetic variability of the parasites is associated with the different clinical manifestations and drug resistance of Leishmania sp. Various molecular biological methods have been standardized to study the genomes of the parasites in order to understand the parasites better. Most updated high-throughput approaches are whole genome sequencing, comparative genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics. The present review gives an overview of the advancement in the field of the Leishmania genome analysis which would help workers in the field to understand the problem of emergence of drug resistance, current epidemiological status, host parasite interaction and designing the drugs