Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology 94 (1998) 249 – 264 Conserved organization of genes in trypanosomatids 1 Fre ´de ´ric Bringaud a, *, Ce ´cile Vedrenne a , Armelle Cuvillier a , Daniel Parzy b , Dominique Baltz a , Emmanuel Tetaud a , Etienne Pays c , Juan Venegas a,2 , Gilles Merlin a , The ´o Baltz a a Laboratoire de Parasitologie Mole ´culaire, Uniersite ´ Victor Se ´gole `ne de Bordeaux II, UPRESA-5016 CNRS, 146 rue Le ´o Saignat, 33076 Bordeaux cedex, France b Laboratoire de Parasitologie, IMTSSA, Bd Charles Liom, Parc du Pharo, 13007 Marseille, France c De ´partement de Biologie Mole ´culaire, Uniersite ´ libre de Bruxelles, 67 rue des cheaux, B1640 Rhode St Gene `se, Belgium Received 2 March 1998; received in revised form 29 May 1998; accepted 2 June 1998 Abstract Trypanosomatids are unicellular protozoan parasites which constitute some of the most primitive eukaryotes. Leishmania spp, Trypanosoma cruzi and members of the Trypanosoma brucei group, which cause human diseases, are the most studied representatives of this large family. Here we report a comparative analysis of a large genomic region containing glucose transporter genes in three Salivarian trypanosomes (T. brucei, T. congolense and T. iax ), T. cruzi and Leishmania donoani. In T. brucei, the 8 kb (upstream) and 14 kb (downstream) regions flanking the glucose transporter genes cluster contain two and six new genes, respectively, six of them encoding proteins homologous to known eukaryotic proteins (phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase, ribosomal protein S12, DNAJ and three small G- proteins — Rab1, YPT6 and ARL3). This gene organization is identical in T. brucei, T. congolense and T. iax suggesting that Salivarian trypanosomes have a high level of conservation in gene organization. In T. cruzi and Leishmania, the overall organization of this cluster is conserved, with insertion of additional genes when compared with T. brucei. Phylogenetic reconstitution based on glucose transporters is in accord with the monophyly of the Abbreiations: ARL3, ADP ribosylation factor like 3; ORF, open reading frame; PI3K, phosphatidylinositol 3 kinase; RPS12, ribosomal protein S12; THT, trypanosome hexose transporter from T. brucei ; TcoHT, from T. congolense ; TcrHT, from T. cruzi ; TvHT, from T. iax. * Corresponding author. Fax: +33 5 57571015; e-mail: bringaud@u-bordeaux2.fr 1 Note: The GenBank accession numbers are: AF031925 (T. brucei :5 THT-flanking region), AF031926 and AF032098 (T. brucei : 3 THT-flanking region), AF031927 (CosTcr1 clone of T. cruzi :3 TcrHT-flanking region), AF031928 (CosTcr2 clone of T. cruzi : ORF1 downstream of the retrotransposon), AF032096 (T. congolense : unit repeat containing the TcoHT1 gene) and AF032097 (T. congolense : unit repeat containing the TcoHT2 gene). 2 Present address: Instituto de Ciencias Biome ´dicas (ICBM), Facultad de Medicina, Independencia 1027, Casilla 70086-Stgo-7, Chile. 0166-6851/98/$19.00 © 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII S0166-6851(98)00080-2