Parasite genome analysis. Progress in the Leishmania genome project.

Genome projects have been established for 7 major groups of human parasitic infections: malaria, leishmaniasis, African trypanosomiasis, American trypanosomiasis, toxoplasmosis, schistosomiasis and filariasis. All except malaria and toxoplasmosis have come under the umbrella of the World Health Organization's Strategic Committee on Parasite Genome Analysis. The focus of this meeting of the Society was to review progress made in the Leishmania and African trypanosome genome projects. This paper introduces the genome projects and reviews briefly progress in pulsed-field gel karyotype mapping and gene identification via expressed sequence tag sequencing for the leishmaniasis genome project. The overall aim of the genome projects is to harness the latest developments in molecular genetic technology and sequence analysis for the rapid-generation of new data which may, in turn, revolutionize our approaches to the study of the biology of these organisms.