Molecular survey and phylogeny of Anaplasma Ovis in small ruminants in al-Qadisiyah province, Iraq

Abstract EN

Anaplasma ovis is a one of an important group of the tick-borne pathogen and an obligate intraerythrocytic bacterium, which infects sheep and goats as well as wild ruminants.

The phylogenetic study of A.

ovis in small ruminants has not studied yet in Iraq.

In this study, the presence of A.

ovis was investigated in a total of 80 (40 sheep and 40 goats) obtained from 16 randomly selected small ruminants flocks in AL-Qadisiyah in Iraq.

All blood samples tested microscopically, firstly by Diff-quick stained blood smear for the detection of intraerythrocytic pathogens.

Total DNA was extracted from a sample and submitted to PCR based on fragment amplified of 16S rRNA gene followed nucleotide sequencing and phylogenetic analysis.

Six out of 80 samples, (10%) from sheep and (5%) from goats gave positive results.

The results of nucleotides sequencing and multiple alignments revealed related Iraqi isolates had a high identity (99.70% - 97.21%) with isolates of other countries, the phylogenetic analysis demonstrated that Iraqi isolates of A.

ovis fell one clade near to Russian and Sweden strains and shared 99.7 %-98.36 % with them.

In conclusions: this work indicates to detect A.

ovis at a low rate in sheep and goat in Iraq and it had a high genetic similarity to world strains.