Author(s)

A. M. Mohamed, A. T. Sharaf El-Din, A. H. Mohamed, M. R. Habib

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Menoufiya University.

The first generation of Biomphalaria snails collected from five Egyptian governorates (Giza, Fayoum, Kafr El-Sheikh, Ismailia and Damietta) were sub-jected to species-specific PCR assays and the results showed that snails collected from the field were B. alexandrina, and there was no evidence for the pres-ence of B. glabrata. The snails were subjected also to RAPD- PCR technique. The results showed that dif-ferent fingerprints with each B. alexandrina strain were produced with varying numbers of bands rang-ing in size from 123.6 to 796.6 bp depending on the snail strain and the primer used. Many specific bands were obtained with the four primers in each strain. Primer OPA-1 amplified the highest number of spe-cific bands (26 bands) and gave the highest poly-morphism among the primers used (100% polymor-phism). The estimated similarity coefficients among B. alexandrina strains based on the RAPD-PCR pro-files ranged from 0.56 to 0.72. The highest similarity coefficient (0.72) was recorded between the strains of Ismailia and Kafr El-Sheikh, while the lowest coeffi-cient (0.56) was reported between the strains of SPSC and Ismailia.

Biomphalaria Alexandrina; Egypt; Rapd ; Species-Specific; Pcr

Mohamed, A. , Sharaf El-Din, A. , Mohamed, A. and Habib, M. (2011) Identification of various Biomphalaria alexandrina strains collected from five Egyptian governorates using RAPD and species-specific PCR techniques. American Journal of Molecular Biology, 1, 17-25. doi: 10.4236/ajmb.2011.11003.