GENETIC-POLYMORPHISM OF LEISHMANIA SPECIES USING KINETOPLAST DNA RESTRICTION-FRAGMENT-LENGTH-POLYMORPHISM AND CDNA PROBE OF LEISHMANIA-DONOVANI

Leishmaniasis represents a group of diseases that range from simple cu taneous lesions through metastasizing diffused cutaneous to severe sys temic infection depending upon the taxon to which the causative parasi te belongs. Therefore, it is important to identify the infecting Leish mania. Methods presently being used, including immunology, biochemistr y and molecular biology have one or the other limitations, leaving sco pe for the search for newer probes. This study reports the characteriz ation of leishmania isolates both by restriction fragment length polym orphism of kinetoplast DNA (kDNA) and genomic DNA. The genomic DNA was probed with a cDNA probe B(2)a(1). Using a kDNA restriction pattern t echnique, different isolates of Leishmania donovani could be different iated from the UR6 strain of L. tropica, but it was not possible to di fferentiate between newer local isolates of L. donovani with most of t he restriction enzymes except AluI. However, the B(2)a(1) cDNA probe w as able to differentiate these isolates effectively. Both of these tec hniques could differentiate newer local isolates of L. donovani from t he older isolates of L. donovani from India, i.e., DD8, RMRI and SS. T he Indian isolates of L. donovani could also be differentiated from is olates of L. donovani from Jeddah and Germany using both techniques. T he present study indicates that the cDNA probe B(2)a(1) can be used as an important adjunct to kDNA restriction analysis for the characteriz ation of Leishmania species.