Towards a unified taxonomy

An interactive session entitled [Towards a unified taxonomy] was presented and settled in the 3[rd] Annual Conference of the Egyptian Parasitologists United EPU [Ain Shams Guest House; 10-11 October, 2012]. Taxonomy and the evolutionary interrelationships of parasites infective to human, remains a topic of debate. So, there is a pressing need to develop a consensus on the taxonomic classification scheme used in the curricula assigned for post-graduate students in all Egyptian Medical Parasitology Departments, with special emphasis on the protozoa

Genetic Variability of Antigen B among Echinococcus granulosus Egyptian Isolates

Genetic polymorphisms of encoding antigen B2 gene (AgB2) in Echinococcus granulosus were studied using PCR-RFLP and DNA sequencing among 20 Egyptian isolates. Five isolates from different host origins (humans, camels, pigs, and sheep) were collected and used. All examined isolates of each host group gave very similar patterns of PCR-RFLP after restriction enzyme digestion with AluI, with the gene size of approximately 140 bp and 240 bp for sheep and human isolates, and approximately 150 bp and 250 bp for pig and camel isolates. No digestion pattern was obtained after incubation of all studied isolates with EcoRI. These results reveal high intra-group homogeneity. DNA sequence analysis highlighted that human infecting strain showed 100% identity with respect to sheep infecting isolate, 96% and 99% with pig and camel infecting isolates, respectively.