On Jun. 5, 2012, an international team of scientists decoded genome of Chagas disease. Previously, scientists had only decoded the genome of the Chagas parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi.

The work took almost a decade and involved 30 researchers from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the U.S. and Uruguay, and was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Chagas disease is named after the Brazilian physician Carlos Chagas, who discovered the disease in 1909. It is caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, which is transmitted to animals and people by insect vectors and is found only in the Americas. Because they tend to bite people’s faces, triatomine bugs are also known as ‘kissing bugs’.