Simultaneous gene expression profiling in human macrophages infected with Leishmania major parasites using SAGE

Abstract

Dual SAGE transcriptome analysis provided a useful, powerful and accurate approach to discriminating genes of human or parasitic origin in Leishmania-infected human MPhis. The findings presented in this work suggest that the Leishmania parasite modulates key transcripts in human MPhis that may be beneficial for its establishment and survival. Furthermore, these results provide an overview of gene expression at two developmental stages of the parasite, namely metacyclic promastigotes and intracellular amastigotes and indicate a broad difference between their transcriptomic profiles. Finally, our reported set of expressed genes will be useful in future rounds of data mining and gene annotation.