Introduction

Babesia sp. is one of the most important tick-transmitted canine piroplasms with high pathogenic potential worldwide.

Objective

To determine the diversity among Babesia sp. in Malaysia and the phylogenetic relationships of Babesia vogeli and Babesia gibsoni in Malaysia with other parts of the world.

Methodology

Whole blood was collected from a total of 24 stray dogs and subjected to PCR to amplify 450-bp variable region of the internal transcribed spacer gene (ITS-2) of Babesia sp. Babesia species consensus sequences from the 24 positive samples were used for this study.

Results

The evolutionary history was inferred using the Neighbor-Joining method with the sum of branch length at 0.29 and 1000 bootstrap replicates indicated that the evolutionary distances using the Jukes-Cantor method was significantly diverse among the genotypes from Malaysia. Phylogenetic relationships of Babesia vogeli and Babesia gibsoni sequences in Malaysia with those from China (JX495401.1), Nigeria (JN982352.1), USA (EU084675.1 and EU084673.1), Taiwan (FJ769391.1), and Germany (AF394536.1, AF394533.1 and AF394535.1) showed that the Malaysia strains were closely related (98–100% identity) to those strains from USA (EU084673.1 and EU084675.1) as compared to other strains from Asia. Sequence variation between Babesia canis and Babesia gibsoni from Malaysia was found to be between 0.2–24.6%.

Conclusion

This investigation revealed for the first time the genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationship of Babesia species in Malaysia and with other sequences around the world. This data might assist in studying the pathogen dynamics, disease prevention, and control measures.