@misc{10481/98450,
year = {2024},
month = {11},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/10481/98450},
abstract = {Lotmaria passim is a ubiquitous trypanosomatid parasite of honey bees nestled within the medically important subfamily Leishmaniinae.
Although this parasite is associated with honey bee colony losses, the original draft genome—which was completed before its differentiation
from the closely related Crithidia mellificae—has remained the reference for this species despite lacking improvements from newer
methodologies. Here, we report the updated sequencing, assembly, and annotation of the BRL-type (Bee Research Laboratory) strain
(ATCC PRA-422) of Lotmaria passim. The nuclear genome assembly has been resolved into 31 complete chromosomes and is paired with
an assembled kinetoplast genome consisting of a maxicircle and 30 minicircle sequences. The assembly spans 33.7 Mb and contains very
little repetitive content, from which our annotation of both the nuclear assembly and kinetoplast predicted 10,288 protein-coding genes.
Analyses of the assembly revealed evidence of a recent chromosomal duplication event within chromosomes 5 and 6 and provided evidence
for a high level of aneuploidy in this species, mirroring the genomic flexibility employed by other trypanosomatids as a means of
adaptation to different environments. This high-quality reference can therefore provide insights into adaptations of trypanosomatids to
the thermally regulated, acidic, and phytochemically rich honey bee hindgut niche, which offers parallels to the challenges faced by other
Leishmaniinae during the challenges they undergo within insect vectors, during infection of mammals, and exposure to antiparasitic
drugs throughout their multi-host life cycles. This reference will also facilitate investigations of strain-specific genomic polymorphisms,
their role in pathogenicity, and the development of treatments for pollinator infection.},
organization = {U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Grant 2020-67013-31861},
organization = {Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Postdoctoral Fellowship 2022-67012-37482},
organization = {Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service Beltsville Bee Research Laboratory in-house funds},
organization = {National Science Foundation Grant DEB-2225083},
organization = {U.S. National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program under Grant No. DGE-2236417},
publisher = {Oxford University Press},
keywords = {Lotmaria passim strain BRL},
keywords = {ATCC PRA-422},
keywords = {Leishmaniinae},
title = {Somy evolution in the honey bee infecting trypanosomatid parasite Lotmaria passim},
doi = {10.1093/g3journal/jkae258},
author = {M. Markowitz, Lindsey and Nearman, Anthony and Zhao, Zexuan and Boncristiani, Dawn and Butenko, Anzhelika and Pablos Torró, Luis Miguel de and Marin Alguacil, Arturo and Xu, Guang and Machado, Carlos A. and S. Schwarz, Ryan and Palmer-Young, Evan C. and Evans, Jay D.},
}