Genetic diversity and multiplicity of infection in Fasciola gigantica isolates of Pakistani livestock

Publication date: Available online 8 February 2020Source: Parasitology InternationalAuthor(s): Zia Ur Rehman, Osama Zahid, Imran Rashid, Qasim Ali, Muhammad Haroon Akbar, Muhammad Oneeb, Wasim Shehzad, Kamran Ashraf, Neil D. Sargison, Umer ChaudhryAbstractFasciola spp. are responsible for over 3 billion US dollars of production loss annually in livestock and cause widespread zoonotic disease. Nevertheless, understating of the emergence and spread of the trematode species is poor. The multiplicity of F. gigantica infection and its spread is potentially influenced by multiple factors, including the abundance of suitable intermediate hosts, climatic conditions favouring the completion of the parasite's lifecycle, and translocation of infected animals, or free-living parasite stages between regions. Here we describe the development of a ‘tremabiome’ metabarcoding sequencing method to explore the numbers of F. gigantica genotypes per infection and patterns of parasite spread, based on genetic characteristics of the mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase 1 (mt-ND-1) locus. We collected F. gigantica from three abattoirs in the Punjab and Balochistan provinces of Pakistan, and our results show a high level of genetic diversity in 20 F. gigantica populations derived from small and large ruminants consigned to slaughter in both provinces. This implies that F. gigantica can reproduce in its definitive hosts through meiosis involving cross- and self-breeding, as described in the closely ...
Source: Parasitology International - Category: Parasitology Source Type: research