The causal agent of visceral leishmaniasis in the Old World. Leishmania infantum JPCM5

A whole genome shotgun sequence of Leishmania infantum clone JPCM5 was generated to ~ 5x coverage (completed in October 2003) by a consortium of research institutes, namely The Sanger Institute, Imperial College and University of Glasgow. The entire genome of L. infantum is approximately 32 Mb and consists of 36 chromosomes with about 8,150 coding genes. All sequence data of L. infantum is available in GenBank, AM502219:AM502254 . The sequence completion of the genomes of L. brazilensis and L. major has allowed for comparison of all three genomes and revealed Leishmania species-specific genes and proteins that could be determinants of species-specific disease phenotypes.