ACTA VETERINARIA ET ZOOTECHNICA SINICA ›› 2017, Vol. 48 ›› Issue (7): 1332-1341.doi: 10.11843/j.issn.0366-6964.2017.07.018

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The Structural and Phylogenetic Analysis of trap Gene in Ovine Babesia Species in China

HE Xin, LIU Jun-long, LIU Ai-hong, WANG Jin-ming, NIU Qing-li, LI You-quan, YIN Hong, LUO Jian-xun*, GUAN Gui-quan*   

  1. State Key Laboratory of Veterinary Etiological Biology, Key Laboratory of Animal Parasitology of Gansu Province/Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou 730046, China
  • Received:2017-02-10 Online:2017-07-23 Published:2017-07-23

Abstract:

This study focused on the structural characteristics of Chinese ovine Babesia trap gene via sequencing the full-length sequence and bioinformatics analysis. And then a phylogenetic analysis was performed on the TRAP nucleotide and amino acid sequences, which provided the data for clarifying the taxonomic relationship of Chinese ovine Babesia. The conserved sequence fragments were obtained using published Babesia trap gene sequences to BLAST 2 of local genomic databases of Chinese ovine Babesia strains. The primers of PCR were designed with the fragment sequences as templates. The full-length trap gene sequences of 6 Chinese ovine Babesia strains were cloned and their structural characteristics were analyzed. The evolutionary relationship of these ovine Babesia strains was analyzed based on the comparisons of TRAP sequence similarities and constructed phylogenetic trees. The full-length gene sequences of trap were cloned from 6 ovine Babesia strains. The results of structural characteristics analysis showed that the trap gene of 6 ovine Babesia strains had 3 patterns of intron, 3, 4 and 5 introns and the predicted ORF sizes were 1 944, 2 100/2 142 and 2 286 bp, respectively. The analysis of amino acid sequences indicated that the predicted ovine Babesia TRAPs possessed all the distinctive domains of TRAP protein family, such as vWFA, TSR, transmembrane motif and CTD. Phylogenetic analysis showed that these Chinese ovine Babesia strains could be divided into 3 groups. The similarities of intra-group between the TRAP sequences were between 99.8% and 100%, and those of inter-group were from 43.6% to 74.6%. The 6 ovine Chinese Babesia strains were divided into 2 clades, Babesia sp. and B. motasi clades. In addition, the B. motasi clade were further divided into 2 sub-clades. The trap gene structure of 6 ovine Babesia strains are various, but the distinctive protein domains are conserved. These Chinese ovine Babesia strains belong to 2 Babesia species, and possibly there are 2 sub-species in the B. motasi species.

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