RANDOM AMPLIFIED POLYMORPHIC DNA FINGERPRINTS OF THE 8 TAXA OF TRICHINELLA AND THEIR COMPARISON WITH ALLOZYME ANALYSIS

Eight taxa have recently been proposed as being encompassed by the gen us Trichinella on the basis of allozyme and biological data. In this p aper we show that an analogous 8 taxon structure for this genus result s from the random amplified polymorphic DNAs (RAPDs). Five 10-mer or 2 0-mer primers were used under different polymerase chain reaction (PCR ) conditions to produce multiband RAPD fingerprints from muscle larvae of 40 isolates of Trichinella spp. The resulting RAPD data were analy sed following the numerical taxonomic approach, and the resulting clas sification was compared to that derived from allozyme data. The agreem ent found between allozymes and RAPDs, while supporting the polyspecif ic structure of the genus Trichinella, confirms the potential of RAPDs as a tool for the detection of cryptic species. The selected primers were tested on individual muscle larvae in an attempt to standardize a RAPD assay for the routine identification of the 8 taxa of Trichinell a. Only 1 of the 5 primers yielded reproducible fingerprints from the single larvae. Using this primer, the 5 species and the 3 other taxa o f the genus Trichinella can be identified in a single assay without th e need for massive in vivo parasite production.