The main etiological agent of South American cutaneous leishmaniasis (ACL). Leishmania braziliensis MHOM/BR/75/M2904

The genome of Leishmania braziliensis clone M2904 (MHOM/BR/75M2904) has been sequenced by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. A whole genome shotgun approach was used to provide a ~6X coverage sequence. The 32 Mb genome has been assembled into 1,031 contigs containing a total of 8,314 annotated genes. As demonstrated by karyotyping studies, L. braziliensis has 35 chromosomes compared to 36 chromosomes present in old world Leishmania species. This difference in chromosome number is thought to be due to the fusion of chromosomes 20 and 34 to make a single chromosome in L. braziliensis. Complete chromosome records are available in GenBank and RefSeq.