Genomes of from Panama and from Brazil: Expansion of Multigene Families in Leishmaniinae Parasites That Are Close Relatives of spp.

The Leishmaniinae subfamily of the Trypanosomatidae contains both genus (monoxenous) and (dixenous). They are amongst the nearest known relatives of , which comprises many human pathogens widespread in the developing world. These closely related lineages are models for the genomic biology of monoxenous and dixenous parasites. Herein, we used comparative genomics to identify the orthologous groups (OGs) shared among 26 Leishmaniinae species to investigate gene family expansion/contraction and applied two phylogenomic approaches to confirm relationships within the subfamily. The and genomes were assembled, with sizes of 29.9 Mb and 38.0 Mb and 9.711 and 12.201 predicted protein-coding genes, respectively. The genome of displayed a higher number of multicopy cell surface protein families, including glycoprotein 63 and glycoprotein 46, compared to spp. The genome of presents expansions of BT1 and amino acid transporters and proteins containing leucine-rich repeat domains, as well as a loss of ABC-type transporters. In total, 415 and 85 lineage-specific OGs were identified in and . The evolutionary relationships within the subfamily were confirmed using the supermatrix (3384 protein-coding genes) and supertree methods. Overall, this study showed new expansions of multigene families in monoxenous and dixenous parasites of the subfamily Leishmaniinae.