Abstract:The long term goal of this project is to
identify and characterize differentially expressed genes in Leishmania
that may be used as potential novel targets for the development of new
drug therapies for the treatment of leishmaniasis. At least 12 million
people in Africa, India and Latin America are infected with Leishmania,
and 350 million are at risk. Moreover, the thousands of US troops
currently deployed in endemic areas (i.e. the Middle East) are at
significant risk for contracting the parasite and significant disease.
It is poorly understood which genes and how many proteins are involved
in the survival and virulence of the pathogenic species of Leishmania.
We hypothesize that differences in the expression of genes among and
between pathogenic and non pathogenic species should identify some of
the genes that are critical to the survival and important to the
virulence of these parasites. Thus, in the current study we will
identify differentially expressed genes between pathogenic and
nonpathogenic species of Leishmania by cDNA-AFLP and subsequently
characterize these genes by sub cloning the amplified fragments and
subjecting them to DNA sequence and analyses. The characterization of
genes differentially expressed between pathogenic and non pathogenic
species is a first step in identifying potential novel targets for the
development of nontoxic drugs to be used in the treatment of
leishmaniasis, a devastating and potentially fatal collection of human
diseases.
