Development of a pan-Babesia FRET-qPCR and a survey of livestock from five Caribbean islands.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Babesia spp. are tick-borne protozoan hemoparasites and the second most common blood-borne parasites of mammals, in particular domestic animals. We used the Clustal Multiple Alignment program and 18S rRNA gene sequences of 22 Babesia species from GenBank to develop a PCR that could detect a wide variety of Babesia spp. in a single reaction. The pan-Babesia FRET-qPCR we developed reliably detected B. gibsoni, B. canis, B. vogeli, B. microti, B. bovis, and B. divergens under controlled conditions but did not react with closely related species, mainly Hepatozoon americanum, Theileria equi, and Toxoplasma gondii.

Results

When we tested the pan-Babesia FRET-qPCR on DNA of whole blood from 752 cattle, sheep, goats, donkeys and horses from five Caribbean islands, we dete

SUBMITTER: Li J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4588467 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature