Marcadores moleculares para identificação de carrapatos vetores de agentes rickettsiais

• Ano de defesa: 2008
• Autor(a) principal: Agostini, Marlos da Matta
• Orientador(a): Siqueira, Cláudio Lísias Mafra de
• Banca de defesa: Fietto, Juliana Lopes Rangel , Paula, Sérgio Oliveira de
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Viçosa
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Mestrado em Bioquímica Agrícola
• Departamento: Bioquímica e Biologia molecular de plantas; Bioquímica e Biologia molecular animal
• País: BR
• Palavras-chave em Português: Marcadores moleculares; Carrapatos; ITS2
• Palavras-chave em Inglês: Molecular markers; Ticks; ITS2
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS::BIOQUIMICA::BIOLOGIA MOLECULAR
• Link de acesso: http://locus.ufv.br/handle/123456789/2447

The relevance of ticks as parasites lies not only on their effects on their hosts, but also the great ability to act as vectors of pathogens, which include viruses, bacteria, protozoa and nematodes. Traditionally, identification of ticks was based on morphological characters and it is labor intensive, and depended on the expertise of specialists, the state of preservation of the material and the stage of development of the specimen. Because it adopts molecular identification of ticks, this work represents a pioneering effort in Brazil. Sequence analyses involving amplification of the second internal transcribed spacers (ITS2) of rDNA were performed for identification of genera and species of ticks. The design of specific primers and PCR standardization was carried on for species considered as major epidemiological issues. ITS2 regions were considered as useful for molecular identification and showed low intraspecific variation. Three out of four designed sets of primers were effective for genera identification. Trials for species-specific primers were successful for three species of Amblyomma, resulting in amplicons of 404 bp, 389 bp and 320 bp for A. cajennense, A. oblongoguttatum and A. parvum, respectively. Sensitivity of the speciesspecific primers was successfully tested in A. cajennense. It was concluded that these results contributed to the efficient molecular identification of ticks species that are of great national relevance.