Use of Padlock Probes and Rolling Circle Amplification (RCA) for Rapid Identification of Trichophyton Species, Related to Human and Animal Disorder

Zakeri, Hamideh; Shokohi, Tahereh; Badali, Hamid; Mayahi, Saba; Didehdar, Mojtaba

While the results of this study can be applied generally, there were some important limitations. In particular, as mentioned by Kong et al. (8) , the specificity of the T. tonsurans probe (Tt-ITS2) is ambiguous because T. equinum is highly closely related. The two species differ by only a single base in the ITS1 region (7, 22) ; therefore, the ITS region does not have sufficient discrimination ability. Designing padlock probes that target other genes, such as β-tubulin (BT2) and translation elongation factor 1-α (TEF1), may be beneficial. In conclusion, species identification of Trichophyton is important for epidemiological and phylogenetic purposes and for genotype delineation. Despite the shortcomings of current molecular identification systems, there is a strong stimulus for the continued use of ITS polymorphisms to generate identification barcodes. Therefore, the RCA-based assay is an alternative to DNA sequencing for species identification.