The evolution of parasitism is a recurrent event in the history of life and a core problem in
evolutionary biology. Trypanosomatids are important parasites and include the human …

Leishmania has a plastic genome, and drug pressure can select for gene copy number
variation (CNV). CNVs can apply either to whole chromosomes, leading to aneuploidy, or to …

Chagas disease, leishmaniasis and sleeping sickness affect 20 million people worldwide
and lead to more than 50,000 deaths annually. The diseases are caused by infection with …

Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas disease, is an obligatory intracellular
parasite with a digenetic life cycle. Due to the variety of host environments, it faces several …

Ribosomes of trypanosomatids, a family of protozoan parasites causing debilitating human
diseases, possess multiply fragmented rRNAs that together are analogous to 28S rRNA …

Base J, β-D-glucosyl-hydroxymethyluracil, is a chromatin modification of thymine in the
nuclear DNA of flagellated protozoa of the order Kinetoplastida. In Trypanosoma brucei, J is …

Abstract Background The Leishmania spp. protozoa, the causative agents of the “neglected”
tropical disease leishmaniasis, are transmitted to mammals by sand fly vectors. Within the …

Histones are well-conserved proteins that form the basic structure of chromatin in eukaryotes
and undergo several post-translational modifications, which are important for the control of …

Kinetochores are macromolecular machines that drive eukaryotic chromosome segregation
by interacting with centromeric DNA and spindle microtubules. While most eukaryotes …

The human pathogenic parasite Trypanosoma brucei possess both de novo and salvage
routes for the biosynthesis of pyrimidine nucleotides. Consequently, they do not require …