Genetic diversity of Leishmania infantum field populations from Brazil.
Leishmania infantum (syn. Leishmania chagasi) is the etiological agent of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in Brazil. The epidemiology of VL is poorly understood. Therefore, a more detailed molecular characterization at an intraspecific level is certainly needed. Herein, three independent molecular methods, multilocus microsatellite typing (MLMT), random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and simple sequence repeats-polymerase chain reaction (SSR-PCR), were used to evaluate the genetic diversity of 53 L. infantum isolates from five different endemic areas in Brazil. Population structures were inferred by distance-based and Bayesian-based approaches. Eighteen very similar genotypes were detected by MLMT, most of them differed in only one locus and no correlation was found between MLMT profiles, geographical origin or the estimated population structure. However, complex profiles composed of 182 bands obtained by both RAPD and SSR-PCR assays gave different results. Unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean trees built from these data revealed a high degree of homogeneity within isolates of L. infantum. Interestingly, despite this genetic homogeneity, most of the isolates clustered according to their geographical origin.
Laboratório de Leishmanioses, Núcleo de Doenças Infecciosas, Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo, Vitória, Brasil.
Marcela
M
Segatto
Lucas Secchim
LS
Ribeiro
Dorcas Lamounier
DL
Costa
Carlos Henrique Nery
CH
Costa
Márcia Rosa de
MR
Oliveira
Sílvio Fernando Guimarães
SF
Carvalho
Andréa Mara
AM
Macedo
Helder Magno Silva
HM
Valadares
Reynaldo
R
Dietze
Cristiana Ferreira Alves de
CF
Brito
Elenice Moreira
EM
Lemos
D000818:Animals; D001938:Brazil; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D016054:DNA, Protozoan / Q000235:genetics*; D004285:Dogs; D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000235:genetics*; D005838:Genotype; D006801:Humans; D018314:Leishmania infantum / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D018895:Microsatellite Repeats; D058889:Molecular Typing; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D019105:Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA Technique
D016054:DNA, Protozoan