Mitochondrial genomics of human pathogenic parasite () .

Background: The human parasite is one of the pathogenic species responsible for cutaneous leishmaniasis in Central and South America. Despite its importance in molecular parasitology, its mitochondrial genome, divided into minicircles and maxicircles, haven't been described so far.

Methods: Using NGS-based sequencing (454 and ILLUMINA), and combining genome assembly and mapping strategies, we report the maxicircle kDNA annotated genome of , the first reference of this molecule for the subgenus . A comparative genomics approach is performed against other and species.

Results: The results show synteny of mitochondrial genes of with other kinetoplastids. It was also possible to identify nucleotide variants within the coding regions of the maxicircle, shared among some of them and others specific to each strain. Furthermore, we compared the minicircles kDNA sequences of two strains and the results show that the conserved and divergent regions of the minicircles exhibit strain-specific associations.