No abstract

To better understand the evolution of the etiologic agent of Chagas disease, we cloned and sequenced 25 alleles from five Tripanosoma cruzi microsatellite markers. The study of the sequences showed highly conserved alleles present in T. cruzi clones belonging to TCI, TCIIc, and TCIIe. This result was also confirmed by the phylogenetic analysis of MCLE01 allele sequences. The examination by capillary electrophoresis of six microsatellite markers from 19 T. cruzi clones showed a high proportion of the alleles found both in the TCI and TCII sublineages. The phylogenetic reconstruction of these 19 clones produced a tree with two major clusters with bootstrap support of 100% and 95%. The first cluster includes T. cruzi clones belonging to the TCI and TCIIa lineages. The second cluster is composed of TCI, TCIIc, TCIId, and TCIIe T. cruzi clones. The analysis of five microsatellite markers in the CLBrener genome showed that almost all the microsatellite markers are synteny; non-Esmeraldo and Esmeraldo haplotypes probably come from the TCIIc and TCIIb lineages. Taken together, our results are in agreement with the two hybridization events hypothesis as the origin of current T. cruzi lineages.

To investigate whether Trypanosoma cruzi populations found in chagasic cardiopathic and non-cardiopathic patients are genetically differentiated, three molecular microsatellite markers were analysed. This analysis was also applied to compare T. cruzi samples from peripheral blood or dejections of Triatoma infestans fed on the blood of the same patients. In order to obtain the first objective, analyses of predominant T. cruzi genotypes were conducted using three approaches: a locus-by-locus analysis; a Fisher method across three loci; and analysis of molecular variance by Genepop and Arlequin programs. Only with one locus and on the blood samples was a significant differentiation detected among non-cardiopathic and cardiopathic groups, which was not confirmed by the other two methods. On the contrary, with the three approaches, it was found that T. cruzi clones present in the blood of patients are genetically differentiated from those detected in dejections of T. infestans fed on the same patients. Our results showed that the most frequent lineage both in blood as well as in triatomine dejection samples was TcI. No significant difference in T. cruzi lineage distribution was observed among chagasic cardiopathic and non-cardiopathic patients. The majority of the samples (50-60%) had only one T. cruzi clone (uniclonal) either in blood or dejection samples.

In order to obtain more information about the population structure of Chilean Trypanosoma cruzi, and their genetic relationship with other Latino American counterparts, we performed the study of T. cruzi samples detected in the midgut content of Triatoma infestans insects from three endemic regions of Chile. The genetic characteristics of these samples were analysed using microsatellite markers and PCR conditions that allow the detection of predominant T. cruzi clones directly in triatomine midgut content. Population genetic analyses using the Fisher's exact method, analysis of molecular variance (AMOVA) and the determination of F(ST) showed that the northern T. cruzi population sample was genetically differentiated from the two southern population counterparts. Further analysis showed that the cause of this genetic differentiation was the asymmetrical distribution of TcIII T. cruzi predominant clones. Considering all triatomines from the three regions, the most frequent predominant lineages were TcIII (38%), followed by TcI (34%) and hybrid (8%). No TcII lineage was observed along the predominant T. cruzi clones. The best phylogenetic reconstruction using the shared allelic genetic distance was concordant with the population genetic analysis and tree topology previously described studying foreign samples. The correlation studies showed that the lineage TcIII from the III region was genetically differentiated from the other two, and this differentiation was correlated with geographical distance including Chilean and mainly Brazilian samples. It will be interesting to investigate whether this geographical structure may be related with different clinical manifestation of Chagas disease.

The objective of this study was to investigate if there is specific host-parasite association in Chilean populations of Trypanosoma cruzi. For this purpose, two groups of parasites were analyzed, one from chronic chagasic patients, and the other from Triatoma infestans triatomines in three regions of the country. The first group consisted of four types of samples: parasites from peripheral blood of non-cardiopathic T. cruzi infected patients (NB); parasites from their corresponding xenodiagnosis (NX); parasites from peripheral blood of T. cruzi infected cardiopathic patients (CB) and parasites from their xenodiagnostics (CX). The T. infestans sample in turn was from three regions: III, V and M (Metropolitan). The genetic differentiation by the Fisher exact method, the lineage distribution of the samples, the molecular phylogeny and the frequency of multiclonality were analysed. The results show that not only are the groups of T. cruzi clones from Chagas disease patients and vectors genetically differentiated, but also all the sub-groups (NB, NX, CB and CX) from the III, V and M regions. The analysis of lineage distribution was concordant with the above results, because significant differences among the percentages of TcI, TcIII and hybrids (TcV or TcVI) were observed. The phylogenetic reconstruction with these Chilean T. cruzi samples was coherent with the above results because the four chagasic samples clustered together in a node with high bootstrap support, whereas the three triatomine samples (III, V and M) were located apart from that node. The topology of the tree including published T. cruzi clones and isolates was concordant with the known topology, which confirmed that the results presented here are correct and are not biased by experimental error. Taken together the results presented here are concordant with a specific host-parasite association between some Chilean T. cruzi populations.

The growing replacement of native vegetation by forest plantations is considered a global threat to biodiversity. Significant variation in biotic communities among stands with similar management suggests that previous land use might have an effect on the capacity of forest plantations to harbor native species. The goal of our study was to determine the effect of land-use history on the biodiversity currently present in pine plantations in the coastal range of Central Chile. In particular, we hypothesized that plantations that directly replaced native forests should have higher diversity of plants and birds than plantations that were established in agricultural areas. We also expected that plantations of higher number of rotations should have fewer habitat-specialists and more generalists/exotics, reflecting a process of biotic homogenization. Using aerial photographs and satellite images encompassing a period of six decades, we classified 108 4-ha sampling units into native forests, and mature (17–20 year) pine plantations of first, second, and third rotation, of either forest or agricultural origin. At each site, we collected data on the abundance and richness of diurnal birds and understory plants, and analyzed their behavior in relation to the land-use history using Generalized Linear Models (GLMs). Also, we evaluated dissimilarity of communities of each pine plantation “treatment” to assess the occurrence of biotic homogenization. As predicted, pine plantations that directly replaced native forests had a higher abundance of forest specialists and less abundance of exotics and generalists than plantations of agricultural origin. In contrast, the number of rotations of pine plantations not only did not affect negatively the diversity and abundance of forest specialist species, but the models showed some signs of naturalization in the studied systems over time, such as the increase in the abundance of native herbs and a reduction in the abundance of their exotic counterparts. These results agree with the lack of evidence for a decrease in the dissimilarity of biotic communities in plantations with time, suggesting that the management of pine plantations in Central Chile is not promoting biotic homogenization, beyond the impact of the initial stages of land use change.