Molecular characterization of some fungi isolated from broiler chicken farms

Abstract

The study was performed on 225 chicken (72 diseased and 153 freshly dead ones) from different 45 commercial broiler farms (1- 30 days old) at Dakahlia Governorate for mycotic infection. Samples were taken from these chickens (lung; air sac; crop; liver and brain from each chicken) after clinical and postmortem examination for mycological examination. The results revealed that, fungi were isolated from 503 positive samples (44.7%); represented as 119 positive samples (10.6%) from diseased chickens and 384 positive samples (34.1 %) from freshly dead ones.651 fungal isolates (moulds and yeasts) were isolated from 1125 samples, where 219(33.6%) were isolated from lung samples followed by 199(30.6%); 119(18.3%); 91(14.0%) and 23(3.5%) from air sac, liver, crop and brain samples respectively. Moreover, A. fumigatus was the most isolated one 141(21.7%) followed by A. flavus 126(19.4%); A. niger 111(17.1%); Rhizopus spp. 67(10.3%); C. albicans 58(8.9%); Mucor spp. 42(6.5%); Penicillium spp. 32(4.9%); A. terreus 20(3.1%); Fusarium spp.19 (2.9%); C. krusei 13(2.0%); C. tropicalis 9(1.4%); A. candidus 9(1.4%) and finally A. ochraceus 4(0.6%). PCR using fungus-specific universal primer pairs (ITS1 and ITS4) was used for identification and genotypic characters of Aspergillus species (A. fumigatus; A. flavus and A. niger).They were able to successfully amplify the ITS1–5.8S rDNA region of all tested Aspergillus isolates, providing a single PCR product of about 600 bp for all tested isolates PCR using fungus-specific universal primer pairs (ITS and RPS) was used for identification and genotypic characters of C. providing a single PCR product of about 109 bp .Sequence of the internal transcribed spacer 1 reigon (ITS-1) of isolated A. flavus Gene Bank accession number for studied nucleotide sequence (Bankit 1867303) is KM 983253. The sequences obtained for ITS-1 region were more than 98% identical to the corresponding GenBank sequences (accession no. DQ467968.1; KC994648.1; LN482516.1 and KP689246.1). Sequence of the internal transcribed spacer 1 region (ITS-1) of isolated C. albicans. Gene Bank accession number for studied nucleotide sequence (Bankit 1867955) is KM 983254. The sequences obtained for ITS-1 region obtained were more than 95% identical to the corresponding GenBank (accession no. M87288.1; gb|S71769.1|S71769; emb (AL033396.1) and AP006852.1).