Genetic Identification of Meriones spp. The Reservoir Host of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in the North Western Region of Libya

Abstract

The identification and classification of reservoir hosts of zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis are very crucial towards the integrated management and control planning. Molecular techniques have been deployed and showed very sensitive and specific results to identify and differentiate rodents with great similarity in phenotypes including Meriones spp. Meriones species are very difficult to distinguish and separate according to their morphology and phenotype traits.  This study was carried out in western region of Libya and three Meriones rodents were collected and their genetic identification was conducted by PCR technique using designed forward and reverse primers from Meriones spp. cytochrome b (cytb) gene sequence. This study has differentiated three haplotypes of M. shawi. with sequences similarities between samples of haplotypes were 99.13%, 99.42% and 99.71% between H1 and H2, between H1 and H3 and between H2 and H3 respectively. The current work is the first to use molecular techniques to study the genetic sequence of Meriones in Libya and has illustrated that PCR technique is powerful tool to discriminate Meriones species in western region of Libya.