Genome-Wide SNP Analysis Reveals Distinct Origins of Trypanosoma evansi and Trypanosoma equiperdum.

Trypanosomes cause a variety of diseases in man and domestic animals in Africa, Latin America and Asia. In the Trypanozoon subgenus, Trypanosoma brucei gambiense and T. b. rhodesiense cause human African trypanosomiasis, while T. b. brucei, T. evansi and T. equiperdum are responsible for nagana, surra and dourine in domestic animals, respectively. The genetic relationships between T. evansi and T. equiperdum and other Trypanozoon species remain unclear because the majority of phylogenetic analyses have been based on only a few genes. In this study, we have conducted a phylogenetic analysis based on genome-wide SNP analysis comprising 56 genomes from the Trypanozoon subgenus. Our data reveal that T. equiperdum has emerged at least once in Eastern Africa and T. evansi at two independent occasions in Western Africa. The genomes within the T. equiperdum and T. evansi monophyletic clusters show extremely little variation, probably due to the clonal spread linked to the independence from tsetse flies for their transmission. [Abstract copyright: © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.]