First morphometric and molecular characterization of Fasciola spp. in Northwest Tunisia
Views
0% 0
Downloads
0 0%
Timeless limited access
Loading...
View/Open
Corresponding Author
Date
2023-08-29
Date Issued
2023-11-01
ISI Journal
Impact factor: 2.0 (Year: 2023)
Citation
Inés Hammami, Lavina Ciuca, Maria Paola Maurelli, Rihab Romdhane, Limam Sassi, Mohamed Ridha Rjeibi, Nadia Farhat, Alain Kouam Simo, Laura Rinaldi, Mourad Rekik, Mohamed Gharbi. (1/11/2023). First morphometric and molecular characterization of Fasciola spp. in Northwest Tunisia. Parasitology Research, 122, pp. 2467-2476.
Abstract
The aim of this study was to characterize the Tunisian Fasciola spp. flukes by morphometric and molecular analyses. Flukes were collected from livers of sheep slaughtered in Sejnane slaughterhouses (Bizerte gouvernorate, Northwest Tunisia) between January and March 2021.
Five morphometric parameters were determined for all the liver flukes, as follows: (i) total body length (BL), (ii) distance between ventral sucker and the tail (VS-T), (iii) distance between oral sucker and ventral sucker (OS-VS), (iv) abdomen diameter (AD), (v) tail diameter (TD) and the body length to width ratio (BL/BW). Molecular identification of the fluke specimens was carried out by polymerase chain reaction, restriction fragment polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) of a 680 bp sequence of the internal transcribes spacer 1 (ITS1) gene and by amplification, sequencing, and phylogenetic analysis of a 500 bp sequence of the ITS2 gene. Morphometric measurements showed that the mean of the total body length of the adult flukes was 21.1 ± 2.7 mm with minimum and maximum lengths of 13 and 31 mm, respectively. The PCR-RFLP analysis revealed a single profile consisting of three bands of approximately 370, 100, and 60 bp. Fasciola sequences described in the present study (GenBank numbers: OQ457027 and OQ457028) showed 99.58–100% identity to Fasciola hepatica. In conclusion, the results of this study show that molecular and phylogenetic analyses confirm the presence of a single species of F. hepatica in the Sejnane region Northwest of Tunisia. However, further studies are needed to identify the occurrence of Fasciola species in other Tunisian regions.
Permanent link
Collections
Other URI
AGROVOC Keyword(s)
Author(s) ORCID(s)
Rekik, Mourad https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7455-2017