Sarcocystis species are heteroxenous cyst-forming coccidian protozoan
parasites with a wide host range, including rodents. In this study,
Sarcocystis spp. samples were isolated from Bandicota
indica, Rattus argentiventer, R. tiomanicus
and R. norvegicus across five provinces of Thailand. Two major groups of
Sarcocystis cysts were determined in this study: large and small cysts.
By sequence comparisons and phylogenetic analyses based on the partial sequences of 28S
ribosomal DNA, the large cysts showed the highest identity value (99%) with the S.
zamani in GenBank database. While the small cysts could be divided into 2
groups of Sarcocystis: S. singaporensis and presupposed
S. zuoi. The further analysis on 18S rDNA supported that the 2 isolates
(S2 and B6 no.2) were as identified as S. singaporensis shared a high
sequence identity with the S. singaporensis in GenBank database and the
unidentified Sarcocystis (4 isolates, i.e., B6 no.10, B6 no.12, B10 no.4
and B10 no.7) showed 96.3–99.5% identity to S. zuoi as well as high
distinct identity from others Sarcocystis spp. (≤93%). The result
indicated that these four samples should be S. zuoi. In this study, we
provided complete sequence of internal transcribed spacer 1 (ITS1), 5.8S rDNA and internal
transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) of these three Sarcocystis species and our
new primer set could be useful to study the evolution of Sarcocystis.
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