Abstract

Doc number: 178

Abstract

Background: Cats are the definitive hosts of Toxoplasma gondii . The distribution of genetic diversity of T. gondii in cats is of importance to understand the transmission of this parasite. The objective of this study was to genetically characterize T. gondii isolates from cats in Yunnan province, southwestern China.

Methods: Genomic DNA was extracted from 5-10 g cat tissue samples (brain, tongue, heart, and liver). Using multilocous polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) technology, we determined genetic diversity of T. gondii isolates from cats in Yunnan province.

Result: In total, 175 stray cats were tested for T. gondii DNA, respectively, 44 (25.14%) of which were found to be positive for the T. gondii B1 gene by PCR amplification. The positive DNA samples were typed at 11 genetic markers, including 10 nuclear markers, namely, SAG1, 5' -3' SAG2, alternative SAG2, SAG3, GRA6, L358, PK1, BTUB, c22-8, c29-2 and an apicoplast locus Apico. Of these, 16 isolates from cats were genotyped with data for more than 9 loci, revealed 5 genotypes in total, of which 11 of 16 samples were identified as ToxoDB#9, two samples may belong to genotye #225, one was Type II, one was ToxoDB#3, and one was ToxoDB#20 (http://toxodb.org/toxo/ ).

Conclusions: The results of the present study indicated a wide distribution of T. gondii infection in cats in Yunnan province, which may pose significant public health concerns. To our knowledge, the present study is the first report of T. gondii prevalence and genotypes in cats in southwestern China, and the first report of Type II T. gondii from cats in China.

Details

Title
Genetic characterization of Toxoplasma gondii from cats in Yunnan Province, Southwestern China
Author
Tian, Yi-Ming; Huang, Si-Yang; Miao, Qiang; Jiang, Hai-Hai; Yang, Jian-Fa; Su, Chunlei; Zhu, Xing-Quan; Zou, Feng-Cai
Pages
178
Publication year
2014
Publication date
2014
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
1756-3305
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/1756-3305-7-178
ProQuest document ID
1517379392
Copyright
© 2014 Tian et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.