Genetic Diversity of in China Assessed Using Simple Sequence Repeat Markers.

The giant roundworm infects pigs and people worldwide and causes serious diseases. The taxonomic relationship between and is still unclear. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the genetic diversity and population genetic structure of 258 specimens from humans and pigs from 6 sympatric regions in -endemic regions of China using existing simple sequence repeat data. The microsatellite markers showed a high level of allelic richness and genetic diversity in the samples. Each of the populations demonstrated excess homozygosity (Ho<He, Fis>0). According to a genetic differentiation index (Fst=0.0593), there was a high-level of gene flow in the populations. A hierarchical analysis on molecular variance revealed remarkably high levels of variation within the populations. Moreover, a population structure analysis indicated that populations fell into 3 main genetic clusters, interpreted as , , and a hybrid of the species. We speculated that humans can be infected with , , and the hybrid, but pigs were mainly infected with . This study provided new information on the genetic diversity and population structure of from human and pigs in China, which can be used for designing control strategies. It can also be beneficial to understand the introgression of host affiliation.