Original articleCharacterization of two strains of Anaplasma marginale isolated from cattle in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, after propagation in tick cell culture

IDE8 tick cell cultures have been used for the isolation and propagation of several isolates of Anaplasma marginale. The genetic heterogeneity of A. marginale strains in cattle is diverse in endemic regions worldwide and the analyses of msp1α (major surface protein 1 alpha) gene sequences have allowed the identification of different strains. This study reports the isolation and propagation of two new isolates of A. marginale in IDE8 cells from blood of two cattle and their morphological and molecular characterization using light microscopy and the msp1α gene, respectively. Small colonies were observed in cytospin smears of each of the isolates 60 days after culture initiation. Based on msp1α sequence variation, the two isolates were found to be separate strains and were named AmRio1 and AmRio2. Analysis of msp1α microsatellite in both strains resulted in a single genotype, genotype E. The amino acid sequence of one MSP1α tandem repeat from the strain AmRio1 resulted in a new sequence (named 162) with one amino acid change. The results of these phylogenetic analyses demonstrated that A. marginale strains from Brazil and Argentina formed two large clusters of which one was less divergent that the other.