GENETIC POLYMORPHISM WITHIN THE LEISHMANIA DONOVANI COMPLEX: CORRELATION WITH GEOGRAPHIC ORIGIN
- 1 June 2004
- journal article
- Published by American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
- Vol. 70 (6) , 613-617
- https://doi.org/10.4269/ajtmh.2004.70.613
Abstract
Random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) was used to detect intraspecific diversity for the Leishmania donovani complex. Fifty-two decameric to 21-meric primers of arbitrary sequence were applied to 15 strains that belong to nine zymodemes. Strains belonging to the species L. major and L. tropica were used as outgroups. A total of 902 amplicons generated by RAPD were scored. Most primers produced species-specific profiles, only 0.6% amplicons were shared by all species, while 4.3% amplicons were common for all 15 strains of the L. donovani complex. Well-supported trees have been constructed, which show a rather strong correlation between the genetic polymorphism of studied strains and their geographic origin. In all obtained trees, L. infantum was paraphyletic. The RAPD profiles suggest that MON-30 belongs to L. donovani. Moreover, the genetic distance between the L. archibaldi strain and other leishmanias does not warrant existence of a separate species.Keywords
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