Kinetoplast Genome of Leishmania spp. Is under Strong Purifying Selection

Instability is an intriguing characteristic of many protist genomes, and trypanosomatids are not exception in this respect. Some regions trypanosomatid genomes evolve fast. For instance, the mitochondrial (kinetoplast) genome consists fairly conserved maxicircle minicircle molecules that can, nevertheless, possess high nucleotide substitution rates between closely related strains. Recent experiments have demonstrated rapid laboratory evolution can result non-functionality multiple genes kinetoplast due to accumulation mutations or loss critical genomic components. An example a components reported entire classes Leishmania tarentolae during cultivation, which results inability generate some correctly encoded genes. In current work, we estimated evolutionary nuclear natural spp. We analyzed synonymous non-synonymous substitutions and, rather unexpectedly, found coding maxicircles among most variable both genomes. addition, demonstrate greatly predominate show signs purifying selection. These imply populations remain functional despite their mutation rate.