DNA fingerprinting reveals relationships between strains of Trypanosoma rangeli and Trypanosoma cruzi.

Very little is known about the structure and sequence of the genomic DNA and kDNA of T. rangeli and no highly polymorphic markers are known. In this paper, we show that the Jeffreys' multilocal probe 33.15 produces characteristic DNA fingerprints with these trypanosomes. The multiband patterns can be used to differentiate T. cruzi from T. rangeli and for recognizing relationships between strains of the latter from widely different geographic areas and different hosts. The topology of a UPGMA phenetic tree constructed from band-sharing data suggests the existence of two groups of T. rangeli: one encompassing parasites from Central America and the northern part of South America and another with the parasites from southern Brazil. This splitting was confirmed by the use of both nuclear and kinetoplast unique sequence probes. Among strains of T. rangeli, band sharing was generally negatively correlated with geographical distance. This work confirms the usefulness of DNA fingerprints as a potent technique for the analysis of relationships in trypanosomatid populations.