Separation and mapping of chromosomes of parasitic Protozoa

Mem Inst Oswaldo Cruz, Rio de Janeiro, Vol. 92(6), November/December 1997, pp. 815-819 Separation and mapping of chromosomes of parasitic Protozoa Rosaura Hernandez-Rivas, Artur Scherf Code Number:OC97153 Size of files: Text: 18.2K Graphics: Table (jpg) - 16.2K Line drawings and photographs (jpg) - 22.6K Many protozoan parasites represent an important group of human pathogens. Pulsed Field Gradient Gel Electrophoresis (PFGE) analysis has been an important tool for fundamental genetic studies of parasites like Trypanosoma, Leishmania, Giardia or the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. We present PFGE conditions allowing a high resolution separation of chromosomes ranging from 500 to 4000 kb within a two day electrophoresis run. In addition, we present conditions for separating large chromosomes (2000-6000 kb) within 36 hr. We demontrate that the application of two dimentional PFGE (2D-PFGE) technique to parasite karyotypes is a very useful method for the analysis of dispersed gene families and comparative studies of the intrachomosomal genome organization. Key words: Pulsed Field Gradient Gel Electrophoresis - two dimensional PFGE - protozoan karyotypes - chromosome mapping - dispersed gene families Copyright 1997 Fundacao Oswaldo Cru