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Abstract:
Genetics is a very powerful biological tool, which has been used with great success with model species, such as Caenorhabditis elegans. For some obvious reasons this approach has been used rather little with parasitic nematodes. The parasitic nematodes Strongyloides spp. and Parastrongyloides spp. have life-cycles which particularly favour a genetic approach, and thus there are great prospects for genetic approaches with these groups. To this end we constructed a genetic map of S. ratti. We did this by identifying 74 'anonymous' genetic markers that differentiated two S. ratti isofemale lines. We then followed the inheritance of these markers through a cross and backcross. The resultant genetic map places the markers into three linkage groups (two autosomes and an X chromosome) spanning 90cM. We found no evidence of strong conservation of chromosomal location or extensive synteny between S. ratti and C. elegans. This work now opens the possibility of mapping important, and interesting, traits of S. ratti. Two examples of such traits are parasite survival within a host and free-living developmental route, both of which vary between isofemale lines in this species. Other traits could be mapped too.
