The Value of Mutation Scanning Approaches for Detecting Genetic Variation — Implications for Studying Intestinal Nematodes of Humans

Abstract

Measuring genetic variation is important for studying the epidemiology, systematics and population genetics of parasitic nematodes as well as for their diagnosis and control. Technological advances pave the way for rapid progress in gene discovery and analysis. In particular, mutation scanning allows high-resolution and high-throughput analysis of sequence or allelic variation between and within individual parasitic nematodes and their populations. This chapter has highlighted a range of applications of SSCP (combined with selective DNA sequencing) to parasitic nematodes for the purposes of species identification or delineation, detection of cryptic species and diagnosis of infections. Impor..