PCR-based methods for identification of potentially zoonotic ascaridoid parasites of the dog, fox and cat.

Author(s): Dennis Jacobs, Xingquan Zhu, Robin Gasser, Neil B Chilton

Publication date: 1997-10-31

Journal: Acta Tropica

Keywords: Animals, Base Sequence, Cats, parasitology, Dogs, Foxes, Humans, Molecular Sequence Data, Polymerase Chain Reaction, Polymorphism, Restriction Fragment Length, Toxocara, isolation & purification

Read this article at

ScienceOpenPubMed

There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

Abstract

Genomic DNA was extracted from ascaridoid nematodes collected from dogs, foxes and cats. A region spanning the second internal transcribed spacer (ITS-2) of the ribosomal DNA of each sample was amplified by PCR. Representative ITS-2 products for each nematode species (Toxocara canis, Toxocara cati and Toxascaris leonina) were sequenced. Restriction sites were identified for use as genetic markers in a PCR-linked RFLP assay. The three species could be differentiated from each other and from other ascaridoids that may be found in human tissues by use of two endonucleases, HinfI and RsaI. Primers were designed to unique regions of the ITS-2 sequences of the three species for use in diagnostic PCR procedures and primer sets evaluated against panels of homologous and heterologous DNA samples. Results suggest that both methods are good candidates for further development for the detection and/or identification of ascaridoid larvae in human tissues.