ABSTRACT
The morphological and molecular identifications of Cyclospora-like oocysts of dogs were underwent in the present study, in which the morphological characteristics of the Cyclospora-like oocysts firstly found in the stool samples of dogs, such as shape, size, acid-fast staining,sporulation and auto-fluorescene, were observed. According to the published sequence of the rDNA gene of Cyclospora in GenBank, 3 primers were designed and were used to amplify part of the 18S rDNA gene of dog-associated Cyclospora-like organism by nested PCR.The amplicons were purified and cloned into vector pMD19T. Then, the positive clones screened were sequenced and subjected to sequence homology and phylogenetic analysis. It was found that the morphological charactertistics of the Cyclospora-like oocysts in dogs were similar to that of the human Cyclospoa oocysts and the size of-the amplified fragment of 18S rDNA was proved to be 715 bp, that was identical to that of the target fragment. Based on the results of sequence homology and phylogenetic analysis, the dog-associated Cyclospora-like organism was identified as the Cyclospora species.