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Conserved repeats in the kinetoplast maxicircle divergent region of Leishmania sp. and Leptomonas seymouri

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Abstract

The maxicircle control region [also termed divergent region (DR)] composed of various repeat elements remains the most poorly studied part of the kinetoplast genome. Only three extensive DR sequences demonstrating no significant similarity were available for trypanosomatids (Leishmania tarentolae, Crithidia oncopelti, Trypanosoma brucei). Recently, extensive DR sequences have been obtained for Leishmania major and Trypanosoma cruzi. In this work we have sequenced DR fragments of Leishmania turanica, Leishmania mexicana, Leishmania chagasi and two monogenetic trypanosomatids Leptomonas seymouri and Leptomonas collosoma. With the emergence of the additional extensive sequences some conserved features of DR structure become evident. A conserved palindromic sequence has been revealed in the DRs of the studied Leishmania species, L. seymouri, and T. cruzi. The overall DR structure appears to be similar in all the Leishmania species, their relative L. seymouri, and T. brucei: long relatively GC-rich repeats are interspersed with clusters of short AT-rich repeats. C. oncopelti, L. collosoma, and T. cruzi have a completely different DR structure. Identification of conserved sequences and invariable structural features of the DR may further our understanding of the functioning of this important genome fragment.

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Abbreviations

CSB-I, -II, -III:

Conserved sequence blocks-I, -II, -III

DR:

Divergent region

gRNA:

Guide RNA

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Acknowledgments

We thank G. Schönian for providing some DNA samples, S.J. Westenberger for providing alternative assemblies of the T. cruzi DR, T.A. Akopian and K. Shidlovsky for assistance with DNA sequencing. The research was partially supported by grants from the International Association for the Promotion of Cooperation with Scientists from the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (INTAS No.2001-216) and from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR No.05-04-48895a).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Molecular Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Vorobjevy Gory 1, build. 12, 119992, Moscow, Russia

    Pavel N. Flegontov, Qiang Guo, Lina Ren & Alexander A. Kolesnikov

  2. Department of Medical Protozoology, Martsinovsky Institute of Medical Parasitology and Tropical Medicine, Sechenov Moscow Medical Academy, M. Pirogovskaya 20, 119830, Moscow, Russia

    Margarita V. Strelkova

Authors
  1. Pavel N. Flegontov
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  2. Qiang Guo
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  3. Lina Ren
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  4. Margarita V. Strelkova
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  5. Alexander A. Kolesnikov
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexander A. Kolesnikov.

Additional information

Communicated by S. Hohmann

Nucleotide sequence data reported in this paper are available in the GenBank™, EMBL and DDBJ databases under the accession numbers DQ107351, DQ107352, DQ107354-DQ107358, DQ239759-DQ239765, DQ492251-DQ492256.

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Flegontov, P.N., Guo, Q., Ren, L. et al. Conserved repeats in the kinetoplast maxicircle divergent region of Leishmania sp. and Leptomonas seymouri . Mol Genet Genomics 276, 322–333 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00438-006-0145-5

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