ORCID Profile
0000-0002-8304-9066
Current Organisation
The University of Edinburgh
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 11-2009
DOI: 10.1016/J.IJPARA.2009.05.012
Abstract: African animal trypanosomiasis, or Nagana, is a debilitating and economically costly disease with a major impact on animal health in sub-Saharan Africa. Trypanosoma vivax, one of the principal trypanosome species responsible for the disease, infects a wide host range including cattle, goats, horses and donkeys and is transmitted both cyclically by tsetse flies and mechanically by other biting flies, resulting in a distribution covering large swathes of South America and much of sub-Saharan Africa. While there is evidence for mating in some of the related trypanosome species, Trypanosoma brucei, Trypanosoma congolense and Trypanosoma cruzi, very little work has been carried out to examine this question in T. vivax. Understanding whether mating occurs in T. vivax will provide insight into the dynamics of trait inheritance, for ex le the spread of drug resistance, as well as examining the origins of meiosis in the order Kinetoplastida. With this in mind we have identified orthologues of eight core meiotic genes within the genome, the presence of which imply that the potential for mating exists in this species. In order to address whether mating occurs, we have investigated a sympatric field population of T. vivax collected from livestock in The Gambia, using microsatellite markers developed for this species. Our analysis has identified a clonal population structure showing significant linkage disequilibrium, homozygote deficits and disagreement with Hardy-Weinberg predictions at six microsatellite loci, indicative of a lack of mating in this population of T. vivax.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 10-2015
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 2008
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 15-05-2009
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 03-07-2018
Publisher: Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Date: 21-04-2022
DOI: 10.1371/JOURNAL.PGEN.1010099
Abstract: East Coast fever, a tick-borne cattle disease caused by the Theileria parva parasite, is among the biggest natural killers of cattle in East Africa, leading to over 1 million deaths annually. Here we report on the genetic analysis of a cohort of Bos indicus (Boran) cattle demonstrating heritable tolerance to infection with T . parva ( h 2 = 0.65, s.e. 0.57). Through a linkage analysis we identify a 6 Mb genomic region on bovine chromosome 15 that is significantly associated with survival outcome following T . parva exposure. Testing this locus in an independent cohort of animals replicates this association with survival following T . parva infection. A stop gained variant in a paralogue of the FAF1 gene in this region was found to be highly associated with survival across both related and unrelated animals, with only one of the 20 homozygote carriers (T/T) of this change succumbing to the disease in contrast to 44 out of 97 animals homozygote for the reference allele (C/C). Consequently, we present a genetic locus linked to tolerance of one of Africa’s most important cattle diseases, raising the promise of marker-assisted selection for cattle that are less susceptible to infection by T . parva .
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Liam Morrison.