Genetic diversity of African isolates of Toxoplasma gondii (original) (raw)

Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular protozoan parasite and has the ability to infect all warm-blooded animals, including humans. While the three clonal lineages of T. gondii (I, II and III) predominate in North America and Europe, strains from other regions in the world appear to have more diverse genotypes. The aim of the current research is to analyse the level of genetic variation among local African T. gondii isolates in relation to their phenotype (genotype phenotype relationships). In this study, multi-locus nested PCR sequence analysis of seven Ugandan T. gondii isolates was applied using nine different genetic markers distributed across seven chromosomes and the apicoplast genome of T. gondii, which improved the discrimination power to detect variation among the local Ugandan strains. Although these markers were sufficient to separate global variation between T.gondii strains, they were not adequate to totally resolve within closely related local isolates. To understand th...