Insights into Genetic Heterogeneity and Drug Resistance in Leishmania donovani of the Indian sub-continent from genomic data

Leishmaniasis is one of the neglected tropical diseases that is endemic to over 90 countries and it’s cases are being reported from non-endemic countries as well like Austria. The cases Visceral Leishmaniasis (VL) caused by Leishmania donovani are concentrated on the Indian Subcontinent. Several studies on the genetic heterogeneity, aneuploidy, and drug resistance emergence reported from Indian subcontinent as well as globally. However, no research has yet inspected the genomic data from the Indian subcontinent to depict a larger microscopic investigation at the genome level. We have considered whole genome sequence (WGS) data from the publicly available database i.e. ENA. Analysis has shown that there is tetraploidy in the chromosome 31, trisomy in chromosome 2 and 8 and trisomy was observed among chromosome 6 and 15 among some samples. This aneuploidy pattern is evolving over time observed in the present study. The pattern of aneuploidy variations of the Indian subcontinent sample differ from from other continents. Further, ATP-binding cassette (ABC) family, Amastin-like surface proteins, A2 genes, amino acid permeases, heat shock 70-related protein 1, mitochondrial precursor and sodium stibogluconate resistance protein were the proteins that exhibited maximum number of mutations among all the analyzed samples. The proteins showing highest number of mutations belong to membrane prtoeins that are involved in drug resistance mechanism. Most of these proteins are involved in the virulence and drug resistant mechanism. The present study provides the possible candidates which can be targeted to disarm the virulence of the protozoan and drug candidates for therapeutic interventions.