Coccidial parasites from the chicken: discrimination of different populations of Eimeria tenella by DNA hybridisation.

Four DNA probes that are reiterated several times within the genome of Eimeria tenella have been used to derive restriction fragment length polymorphism patterns that are characteristic for different laboratory-maintained or recently isolated populations. Three of the four probes hybridised only to DNA from E tenella whereas probe B209 also hybridised to DNA from both E praecox (strongly) and E acervulina (more weakly). The results of this study confirm the usefulness of DNA probes for taxonomic or identification studies and indicate that, with further effort, a wider range of strain-, species- and genera-specific DNA probes could be isolated to expand our understanding of the epizootiology of coccidial parasites.