''Leishmania infantum'' is the causative agent of infantile

visceral leishmaniasis Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), also known as kala-azar ( Hindi: kālā āzār, "black sickness") or "black fever", is the most severe form of leishmaniasis and, without proper diagnosis and treatment, is associated with high fatality. Leishmanias ...

in the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean Basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Western and Southern Europe and Anatolia, on the south by North Africa, and on ...

region and in

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived ...

, where it has been called ''Leishmania chagasi''. It is also an unusual cause of

cutaneous leishmaniasis Cutaneous leishmaniasis is the most common form of leishmaniasis affecting humans. It is a skin infection caused by a single-celled parasite that is transmitted by the bite of a phlebotomine sand fly. There are about thirty species of '' Leish ...

, which is normally caused by specific lineages (or zymodemes). Wild canids and domestic dogs are the

natural reservoir In infectious disease ecology and epidemiology, a natural reservoir, also known as a disease reservoir or a reservoir of infection, is the population of organisms or the specific environment in which an infectious pathogen naturally lives and r ...

of this organism. The sandfly species ''

Lutzomyia longipalpis ''Lutzomyia longipalpis'' (''L. longipalpis'') is a species complex of sand fly, sandfly belonging to the family Psychodidae. This species is primarily present in Central America, Central and South America, but has also appeared in Mexico. There ...

'' serves as the primary vector for the transmission of the disease. ''Leishmania infantum'' is closely related to ''

Leishmania donovani ''Leishmania donovani'' is a species of intracellular parasites belonging to the genus ''Leishmania'', a group of haemoflagellate kinetoplastids that cause the disease leishmaniasis. It is a human blood parasite responsible for visceral leishmani ...

'', and some authors believe that these two species are so close as to actually be subspecies of each other; however, phylogenetic analyses can easily distinguish between the two groups despite no difference in morphology in the

species complex In biology, a species complex is a group of closely related organisms that are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. The taxa in the complex may be able to hybridize readily with each oth ...

. Some isolates formerly labelled ''L. donovani'' may be actually ''L. infantum''.

Model system for studies of DNA repair

Comparative bioinformatic analyses showed that the size of the ''L. infantum''

BRCA2 ''BRCA2'' and BRCA2 () are a human gene and its protein product, respectively. The official symbol (BRCA2, italic for the gene, nonitalic for the protein) and the official name (originally breast cancer 2; currently BRCA2, DNA repair associated) ...

protein is approximately three times smaller (125 kD) than its human counterpart. Furthermore, analyses revealed that LiBRCA2 possesses key features of the BRCA2 family. The smaller size of the ''Leishmania'' BRCA2 DNA repair protein has been exploited to better understand its function in homologous recombination and its interaction with the LiRAD51 recombinase.

References

External links

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q1950789 Parasitic excavates Trypanosomatida