Secondray structure and sequence of ITS2-rDNA of the Egyptian malaria vector Anopheles pharoensis (Theobald)

Out of the twelve Anophelines present in Egypt, only five species known to be malaria vectors. Anopheles (An.) pharoensis proved to be the important vector all over Egypt, especially in the Delta. Anopheles sergenti proved to be the primary vector in the Oases of the Western Desert, An. multicolor in Faiyoum, An. stephensi in the Red Sea Coast, and An. superpictus in Sinai. Genomic DNA was isolated from single adult mosquito of An. pharoensis (Sahel Sudanese form), PCR was performed to amplify ITS2 region of rDNA using specific primers for 5.8S and 28S rDNA genes. The amplicons were purified, directly sequenced and aligned to the sequence of the same region of An. gambiae, using clustalw2. The length of ITS2-rDNA of An. pharoensis was 411bp. The GC content of the ITS2 reported 53% is consistent with spacer base composition in Anopheles species. The similarity between the two species was 52% and genetic distance was 0.46.Variable simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are found at low frequency. The secondary structure of rDNA-ITS2was predicted by MFOLD and was -192; 60 to-195.32 kilocalories/mole.