Vol. 12, Issue 3 (2023)

Author(s):
Edith R, Harikrishnan TJ and Balagangatharathilagar M

Abstract:
Oriental theileriosis is a non-lymphoproliferative, tick borne haemoprotozoan disease caused by Theileria orientalis. Subclinical cases of T. orientalis occurs commonly but stress may result in clinical cases of Oriental theileriosis. Many genotypes of T. orientalis have been identified and few of them have been associated with clinical disease. In this study, three major genotypes viz., Chitose, Ikeda and Buffeli of T. orientalis were identified and sequenced based on Major Piroplasm Surface Protein (MPSP) gene. The sequences of these three genotypes were analyzed for its phylogenetic relationship. Evolutionary analysis of sequences of Chitose, Ikeda, Buffeli and 48 references from NCBI Gene Bank Database was done using MEGA6 tool. Phylogenetic trees of T. orientalis genotypes were generated by a stochastic algorithm. Initial tree(s) for the heuristic search were obtained by the Neighbour-Joining method to a matrix of pairwise distances estimated using the maximum composite likelihood approach. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that all these three genotypes of T. orientalis were closely related to T. orientalis of Brazil (AB581599), Vietnam (AB560823), Mangolia (AB571887) and Indonesia (AF 102500). Movement of animals from these places to India during ancient days might be the reason for this phylogenetic relationship of T. orientalis genotypes from the study area.