A team of international researchers have discovered two genes which can give clues about the tsetse fly-borne disease known as sleeping sickness and a deadly cattle disease which occurs in Africa. The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study was led by scientists from ILRI and from Britain's Liverpool, Manchester and Edinburgh universities, and also involved other researchers in Britain, Ireland and South Korea.

Sleeping sickness is a deadly disease which kills more than half of the infected people. The disease is caused by trypanosome parasite which comes from infected cattle and livestock. Figures reveal that a trypanosome parasite affects a large number of cattle and it costs $4 to $5 billion to the economy of the nation, annually.

Steve Kemp, a Geneticist working on the study at both the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the University of Liverpool said that two genes discovered in the study will help the cattle breeders to identify the animals that are best at resisting disease.

Researchers claim that these genes will also be helpful in combining the genetic traits of animals with other important traits like high productivity and drought tolerance.