READ ALIGNMENT; PROTEIN; LENGTH; FUSIONS; REPAIR; CHROMOSOME; FRAMEWORK; PATHWAYS; COMPLEX

Author summaryParasites of the genus Leishmania cause leishmaniasis, a neglected tropical disease. Telomeric and sub-telomeric regions of these flagellates are often associated with virulence. That is why studying telomere maintenance is important. Here we demonstrate that deletion of one of the proteins, implicated in telomere maintenance, resulted in elongated telomeres. This is unexpected, because deletion of the same gene in another model organism, Trypanosoma brucei, has an opposite effect. Previous comparative genomic studies suggested that the protein under study might be also involved in genome stability. Nevertheless, we did not detect any trace of genomic instability in L. mexicana after 100 passages. We concluded that Ku80 is involved in telomere maintenance but dispensable for genomic stability in Leishmania mexicana.