title: Trypanosoma cruzi: sequence analysis of the variable region of kinetoplast minicircles.
abstract: The comparisons of 170 sequences of kinetoplast DNA minicircle hypervariable region obtained from 19 stocks of Trypanosoma cruzi and 2 stocks of Trypanosoma cruzi marenkellei showed that only 56% exhibited a significant homology one with other sequences. These sequences could be grouped into homology classes showing no significant sequence similarity with any other homology group. The 44% remaining sequences thus corresponded to unique sequences in our data set. In the DTU I ("Discrete Typing Units") 51% of the sequences were unique. In contrast, in the DTU IId, 87.5% of sequences were distributed into three classes. The results obtained for T. cruzi marinkellei, showed that all sequences were unique, without any similarity between them and T. cruzi sequences. Analysis of palindromes in all sequence sets show high frequency of the EcoRI site. Analysis of repetitive sequences suggested a common ancestral origin of the kDNA. The editing mechanism that occurs in kinetoplastidae is discussed.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Génétique et Evolution des Maladies Infectieuses, UMR CNRS-IRD 2724 and UR IRD 165, Centre IRD, 911 avenue Agropolis, BP 64501, 34394 Montpellier Cedex 5, France. telleria@mpl.ird.fr
authors.forename: Jenny
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Telleria
authors.forename: Bénédicte
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Lafay
authors.forename: Myrna
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Virreira
authors.forename: Christian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Barnabé
authors.forename: Michel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tibayrenc
authors.forename: Michal
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Svoboda
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D018105:DNA, Kinetoplast / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D012091:Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D014349:Trypanosoma cruzi / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D018105:DNA, Kinetoplast