 Evidence can be found for recombination between several different groups of telomeres.The "L. major" and "L. infantum" genomes contain only about 50 copies of inactive degenerated "Ingi"/L1Tc-related elements (DIREs), while "L. braziliensis" also contains several telomere-associated transposable elements and spliced leader-associated retroelements.The "Leishmania" genomes share a conserved core proteome of about 6200 genes with the related trypanosomatids "Trypanosoma brucei" and "Trypanosoma cruzi", but around 1000 "Leishmania"-specific genes are known, which are mostly randomly distributed throughout the genome.