Full Description

The potential for waterborne disease caused by at least two species of human pathogenic microsporidia has heightened interest in clinical and environmental detection methods for these organisms. Since microsporidia infect a wide range of organisms (from vertebrates to insects) the need for taxonomically specific detection methods capable of identifying human pathogenic microsporidia to the species level, especially in water, are needed. PCR detection followed by computer database homology comparison (CDHC) was used for species determination of human and insect pathogenic microsporidia. As a challenge and to validate the author's speciation approach a phylogenetic tree was generated using the small subunit ribosomal DNA sequences (SUU-fDNA) of a large number of microsporidia found in sequence databases. This provided an index of similarity subsequently used as an assessment of CDHCs ability to differentiate between closely related species. Polymerase chain reaction followed by dye termination PCR sequencing and subsequent CDHC of the sequences was performed on 8 species of microsporidia including 4 human pathogenic strains. The 4 non-human pathogenic microsporidia tested by this approach were those shown by the phylogenetic analyses to be very closely related to other species as determined by branch length. In all cases the CDHC approach was able to correctly identify the control organisms. Therefore, CDHC proved to be a reliable method that can be used for species determination of human pathogenic microsporidia detected by PCR in environmental samples. Includes 16 references, tables, figure.

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Edition: Vol. - No. Published: 01/01/1999File Size: 1 file , 240 KB