Abstract
Leishmania are pathogenic protozoa of the order Kinetoplastida and the family Trypanosomatidae, and they are responsible for diseases affecting more than 12 million people a year throughout tropical and sub-tropical regions. Leishmania have a dimorphic life cycle consisting of extracellular promastigotes that multiply and develop within the alimentary tract of their sand fly vectors and intracellular amastigotes that reside and multiply within the phagolysosomal vacuoles of their host macrophages. Depending mainly upon the species of Leishmania, human infection can display a spectrum of clinical manifestation from localized cutaneous involvement to late destruction of mucous membranes to generalized systemic disease with fatal outcome. Distribution of the more than 20 species and sub-species of Leishmania and the diseases they produce are determined by the availability of competent vectors. Phlebotomine sand flies are the only known natural vectors of Leishmania, and of the more than 400 phlebotomine species described, fewer than fifty are known to be involved in the transmission cycle of these parasites. Furthermore, some vectors species are highly restricted to the species of Leishmania that they transmit in nature. This chapter reviews our vector biological studies, which over the last 20 yrs have sought to better understand the natural habitat of Leishmania parasites during their transformation, growth, differentiation, and migration in the alimentary tract of their competent sand fly vectors and the barriers to survival that are encountered in refractory flies. The review emphasizes those of our studies that have sought to define the parasite-derived molecules that permit the development of transmissible infections to proceed. The work will hopefully serve to better inform the search of the Leishmania and sand fly genomes so that a fuller accounting of the molecules controlling parasite-vector interactions can be achieved, with a longer view toward the development of a successful transmission blocking vaccine(s).
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Sacks, D. (2010). Molecular Aspects of Parasite – Vector Interactions In Leishmaniasis. In: Georgiev, V. (eds) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH. Infectious Disease. Humana Press, Totowa, NJ. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-512-5_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-60761-512-5_16
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