Abstract
The genus Acanthamoeba includes pathogenic strains which are causative agents of keratitis and encephalitis that often may end fatal in humans and other animals. In the present study, forty soil samples were collected in the island of El Hierro, Canary Islands, Spain, and checked for the presence of Acanthamoeba. Samples were cultivated onto 2 % non-nutrient agar plates seeded with a layer of heat killed Escherichia coli. Amplification by PCR and sequencing of the DF3 region of the 18S rDNA of Acanthamoeba was carried out in order to confirm morphological identification of the amoebae. Furthermore, Acanthamoeba spp. was isolated from 47.5 % of soil samples. Moreover, genotypes T2, T4, and T11 were identified in these samples. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to establish genotypes T2, T4, and T11 in soil sources from El Hierro island.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the grants RICET (project no. RD12/0018/0012 of the program of Redes Temáticas de Investigación Cooperativa, FIS), Spanish Ministry of Health, Madrid, Spain; the Project PI13/00490 “Protozoosis Emergentes por Amebas de Vida Libre: Aislamiento, Caracterización, Nuevas Aproximaciones Terapéuticas y Traslación Clínica de los Resultados” from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III; and Project ref. AGUA3 “Amebas de Vida Libre como Marcadores de Calidad del Agua” from CajaCanarias Fundación. ALA and MRB were funded by Becas de Investigación Obra Social La Caixa-Fundación Cajacanarias para Postgraduados 2014. IS was funded by Ayudas para estancias investigadores—ULL, 2015. JLM was supported by the Ramón y Cajal Subprogramme from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity RYC-2011-08863. Authors are grateful to Jorge Rodríguez for his help during the sampling in the island of El Hierro.
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Reyes-Batlle, M., Zamora-Herrera, J., Vargas-Mesa, A. et al. Acanthamoeba genotypes T2, T4, and T11 in soil sources from El Hierro island, Canary Islands, Spain. Parasitol Res 115, 2953–2956 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-016-5048-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-016-5048-8