Genetic Analysis of the Mitochondrial rrnS Gene of Zoonotic Anisakis pegreffii (Nematoda: Anisakidae) Isolated from Micromesistius Poutassou (R.) in the Aegean Sea

Abstract

Ascaridoid nematodes were found in viscera of the blue whiting Micromesistius poutassou (Risso, 1826) from the Aegean Sea in the parasitological examination. Collected nematodes were morphologically identified as the third (L3) stage of Anisakis type I larvae and then subject to Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region to identify the species. Randomly selected larvae were molecularly confirmed as Anisakis pegreffii by RFLP analysis. Subsequently, L3 of A. pegreffii were amplified and bi-directionally sequenced at the small subunit ribosomal RNA (rrnS) gene. The rrnS sequence of A. pegreffii (MT484284) had 100% identity with the rrnS gene of A. pegreffii (JX500050, LC222461, MF140359, MT312511, MT312512) which were found in fish and cetaceans hosts, Scomber japonicus, Conger myriaster, Neophocaena asiaeorientalis, and Stenella coeruleoalba, from the Mediterranean Sea, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean waters. This study provided the genetic analysis of zoonotic A. pegreffii from the Turkish marine waters based on the rrnS gene for the first time. This sequence (MT484284) can be used as the novel rrnS sequence of A. pegreffii in the genetic analysis for ascaridoid nematodes in the Mediterranean Sea.