Genetic Identification of Meriones spp. The Reservoir Host of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis in the North Western Region of Libya

The identification and classification of reservoir hosts zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis are very crucial towards the integrated management control planning. Molecular techniques have been deployed showed sensitive specific results to identify differentiate rodents with great similarity in phenotypes including Meriones spp. species difficult distinguish separate according their morphology phenotype traits. This study was carried out western region Libya three were collected genetic conducted by PCR technique using designed forward reverse primers from cytochrome b (cytb) gene sequence. has differentiated haplotypes M. shawi. sequences similarities between samples 99.13%, 99.42% 99.71% H1 H2, H3 H2 respectively. current work is first use molecular sequence illustrated that powerful tool discriminate Libya.