Onchocerca volvulus: enzyme polymorphism in relation to the differentiation of forest and savannah strains of this parasite

Isozyme analysis was carried out on Onchocerca volvulus worms collected from Liberia, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Sudan to see whether this technique could detect differences between forest and savannah populations of this parasite. A total of 243 forest and 189 savannah individual female worms were electrophoresed and stained for seven enzymes. Four showed some polymorphism, LDH, MDH, PGM and MPI and the other three, GAPDH, PEP and GPI were invariant. Statistical analysis of the results showed that the relative proportions of genotypes from within the different countries conformed to Hardy-Weinberg expectations. Pairwise comparisons of allele frequencies between countries showed that populations from Liberia and Ivory Coast had a very similar composition; there was some divergence between all the other pairs of populations and the genetic distance was calculated to summarize the degree of divergence. The number of loci examined was small and the genetic distances were within the range expected for separate geographical populations of the same species. The usefulness of this technique in worm identification is discussed.