Comparative Analysis of Repetitive DNA between the Main Vectors of Chagas Disease: Triatoma infestans and Rhodnius prolixus (original) (raw)

2018, International journal of molecular sciences

Chagas disease or American trypanosomiasis affects six to seven million people worldwide, mostly in Latin America. This disease is transmitted by hematophagous insects known as "kissing bugs" (Hemiptera, Triatominae), with and being the two most important vector species. Despite the fact that both species present the same diploid chromosome number (2 = 22), they have remarkable differences in their total DNA content, chromosome structure and genome organization. Variations in the DNA genome size are expected to be due to differences in the amount of repetitive DNA sequences. The genome-wide analysis revealed the existence of 42 satellite DNA families. BLAST searches of these sequences against the genome assembly revealed that only four of these satellite DNA families are shared between both species, suggesting a great differentiation between the and genomes. Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) location of these repetitive DNAs in both species showed that they are dis...

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