Epidemiology of human sporotrichosis investigated by amplified fragment length polymorphism

Abstract

Amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) was used to analyze the genetic diversity of Peruvian strains of Sporothrix schenckii and to compare them to a panel of non-Peruvian strains. AFLP analysis suggests that the Peruvian strains can be divided into two homogeneous clusters with no reference to geographical origin or the clinical form of sporotrichosis. The strains from abroad present heterogeneous profiles, with the Bolivian strain and the Colombian strains related to one of the Peruvian population. Sequencing of internal transcribed spacer 2, used to examine the relationships over a longer distance, confirmed the division of Peruvian strains into two populations that can be identified on the basis of a single but specific sequence divergence. This paper introduces automated AFLP analysis as a valuable tool for further investigation of the epidemiology and ecology of S. schenckii.

FIG. 1.

Dendrogram generated by UPGMA analysis with the Dice coefficient from AFLP profiles obtained for strains of S. schenckii by using primers EcoRI-AA and MseI-A, showing Peruvian clusters A and B.

FIG. 2.

Map of Peru showing the geographic locations of S. schenckii strains used in this study. The AFLP cluster B/AFLP cluster A ratio is given in parentheses for each location.

FIG. 3.

Phylogram expressing distances (UPGMA) between ITS2 sequences of different strains typed by AFLP (this study) or mtDNA-RFLP (22). DNA sequences aligned cover part of the 5.8S sequence and the complete ITS2 sequence (316 positions aligned). Sequences from the work of Watanabe et al. (22) are identified by GenBank accession no. AB122042 is an mtDNA group B strain from Japan. AB122048, AB0122050, and AB0122052 are mtDNA group A strains from Argentina, Venezuela, and South Africa, respectively.