Lishmania

Trypanosomatida parasites, such as trypanosoma and lishmania, are the cause of deadly diseases in many third world countries. A distinctive feature of these organisms is the three dimensional organization of their mitochondrial DNA into maxi and minicircles. In some of these organisms minicircles are confined into a small disk volume and are topologically linked, forming a gigantic linked network. The origins of such a network as well as of its topological properties are mostly unknown. In this paper we quantify the effects of the confinement on the topology of such a minicircle network...

We examined changes in the phlebotomine fauna resulting from human intervention in a tropical dry forest of Northern Colombia where visceral and cutaneous leishmaniases are endemic. A natural forest reserve (Colosó) and a highly degraded area (San Andrés de Sotavento [SAS]) were sampled monthly for 8 mo using Shannon traps, sticky traps, and resting-site collections. Overall abundances were higher in Colosó (15,988) than in SAS (2,324). and species richness of phlebotomines was greater in the forest reserve (11 species) than in the degraded habitat (seven species)...