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LEXSY Biosafety Status

Leishmania tarentolae is a unicellular, flagellated protozoan organism and belongs to a family of parasites shuttling between sandflies and vertebrates. Since isolation from its lizard host Tarentola mauretanica in 1921, L. tarentolae was kept in axenic culture. It is not pathogenic to mammalians and is fully approved for use in biosafety level 1 (S1) laboratories. Genome sequencing of L. tarentolae revealed loss of genes asscciated to the intracellular stage of human pathogenic species (Raymond et. al 2012).