Genetic analysis of natural recombinant Brazilian Toxoplasma gondii strains by multilocus PCR-RFLP.

Polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) at eight independent loci was used to determine the types (I, II or III) lineage of 20 Toxoplasma gondii strains isolated from humans and animals in Brazil. RH (type I, highly virulent), ME49 (type II, avirulent) and VEG (type III, avirulent) were used as reference strains. Differently from expected frequencies, all Brazilian strains showed to have recombinant genotypes, with typical alleles of types I, II or III at almost all loci assessed.

Genetic variability of Brazilian Toxoplasma gondii strains detected by random amplified polymorphic DNA-polymerase chain reaction (RAPD-PCR) and simple sequence repeat anchored-PCR (SSR-PCR).

The genetic variability of 19 Toxoplasma gondii strains isolated from humans and animals in Brazil was detected by both random amplified polymorphic DNA-polymerase chain reaction (RAPD-PCR) and simple sequence repeat anchored-PCR (SSR-PCR) for the first time. Two reference strains, RH (highly virulent) and ME49 (avirulent), were submitted to both assays. Besnoitia sp.