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The species of the Leishmania donovani species complex cause visceral leishmaniasis, a debilitating infectious disease transmitted by sandflies. Understanding molecular changes associated with population structure in these parasites can help unravel their epidemiology and spread in humans. In this study, we used a panel of standard microsatellite loci and genome-wide SNPs to investigate population-level diversity in L. donovani strains recently isolated from a small geographic area spanning India, Bihar and Nepal, and compared their variation to that found in diverse strains of the L. donovani complex isolates from Europe, Africa and Asia. Microsatellites and SNPs could clearly resolve the phylogenetic relationships of the strains between continents, and microsatellite phylogenies indicated that certain older Indian strains were closely related to African strains. In the context of the anti-malaria spraying campaigns in the 1960s, this was consistent with a pattern of episodic population size contractions and clonal expansions in these parasites that was supported by population history simulations. In sharp contrast to the low resolution provided by microsatellites, SNPs retained a much more fine-scale resolution of population-level variability to the extent that they identified four different lineages from the same region one of which was more closely related to African and European strains than to Indian or Nepalese ones. Joining results of in vitro testing the antimonial drug sensitivity with the phylogenetic signals from the SNP data highlighted protein-level mutations revealing a distinct drug-resistant group of Nepalese and Indian L. donovani. This study demonstrates the power of genomic data for exploring parasite population structure. Furthermore, markers defining different genetic groups have been discovered that could potentially be applied to investigate drug resistance in clinical Leishmania strains.
Pubmed ID: 22119748
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Database of genomes at various stages of completion, from early access to partial genomes with automatic annotation through to complete genomes with extensive manual curation. Its primary goals are: 1) to provide reliable access to the latest sequence data and annotation/curation for the whole range of organisms sequenced by the Pathogen group, and 2) to develop the website and other tools to aid the community in accessing and obtaining the maximum value from these data.
View all literature mentionsBlocks is a database of highly conserved regions of proteins, or Blocks. THe database is no longer maintained or updated and some of its tools are no longer functional. However, Blocks does provide Block Searcher, Get Blocks and Block Maker, aids to detection and verification of protein sequence homology. They compare a protein or DNA sequence to a database of protein blocks (current version), retrieve blocks, and create new blocks, respectively. Users can further view blocks by (keyword or number), search a sequence against the database of blocks, search blocks against each other, or make blocks of their own.
View all literature mentionsThe directing and coordinating authority responsible for public health within the United Nations system. The WHO Regional Office for Europe (WHO/Europe) is one of the six regional offices around the world. It serves the WHO European Region, which comprises 53 countries from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. WHO/Europe collaborates with a range of public health stakeholders in the Region and globally, to ensure that coordinated action is taken to develop and implement efficient health policies and to strengthen health systems. WHO/Europe is made up of public health, scientific, and technical experts.
View all literature mentionsOrganization that serves the scientific and educational needs of bioinformatic practitioners and the general public. They develop and maintain computational resources to facilitate world-wide communications and collaborations between people of all educational and professional levels. They provide and promote open access to the materials and methods required for, and derived from, research, development and education.
View all literature mentionsSoftware tool which predicts possible impact of amino acid substitution on structure and function of human protein using straightforward physical and comparative considerations. PolyPhen-2 is new development of PolyPhen tool for annotating coding nonsynonymous SNPs.
View all literature mentionsIt is used to compare a novel sequence with those contained in nucleotide and protein databases by aligning the novel sequence with previously characterized genes.
View all literature mentionsAn exploratory population genetics software environment able to handle large samples of molecular data (RFLPs, DNA sequences, microsatellites), while retaining the capacity of analyzing conventional genetic data (standard multi-locus data or mere allele frequency data). (entry from Genetic Analysis Software)
View all literature mentionsA cross-platform software program for Bayesian MCMC analysis of molecular sequences. It is entirely orientated towards rooted, time-measured phylogenies inferred using strict or relaxed molecular clock models. It can be used as a method of reconstructing phylogenies but is also a framework for testing evolutionary hypotheses without conditioning on a single tree topology. BEAST uses MCMC to average over tree space, so that each tree is weighted proportional to its posterior probability. We include a simple to use user-interface program for setting up standard analyses and a suit of programs for analysing the results.
View all literature mentionsData analysis service to predict whether an amino acid substitution affects protein function based on sequence homology and the physical properties of amino acids. SIFT can be applied to naturally occurring nonsynonymous polymorphisms and laboratory-induced missense mutations. (entry from Genetic Analysis Software) Web service is also available.
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