Leishmania: conserved evolution - diverse diseases

The landmark completion of the Leishmania major genome sequence and the recent publication of the L. infantum and L. braziliensis genomes revealed the surprising result that, although separated by 15-50 million years of evolution, the Leishmania genomes are highly conserved and have less than 1% species-specific genes. Yet, these three species of Leishmania cause distinctive and diverse diseases in humans. Here, we discuss these findings together with recent microarray and proteomics studies and highlight their importance in understanding Leishmania disease phenotypes.