Identification of Leishmania species by next generation sequencing of hsp70 gene

Abstract

Leishmaniasis is a major public health problem worldwide. Although next generation sequencing technology has been widely used in the diagnosis of infectious diseases, it has been scarcely applied in identification of Leishmania species. The aim of this study was to compare the efficiency of MinIONTM nanopore sequencing and polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphism in identifying Leishmania species. Our results showed that the MinIONTM sequencer was able to discriminate reference strains and clinical samples with high sensitivity in a cost and time effective manner without the prior need for culture.