Fig. 1

Trypanosomatid α-tubulin amplification in multiple insect hosts. a Illustration of the locus of trypanosomatid alpha/beta (α/β) tubulin tandem repeated arrays. As highlighted in dark blue, the 193-bp amplicon is located at the 3´end of each α-tubulin repeat, being the number of repeats variable across trypanosomatid species. b Clustal analysis of the 3′ end of the α-tubulin open reading frame showing conserved blocks of homology (in blue) that were used for designing primers and TaqMan probes. c Representative 2% agarose gel electrophoresis of the 193 α-tubulin trypanosomatid region amplified in samples of bumblebees, wild bees and grasshoppers. Numbers refer to different samples. The negative control (C-) and the positive control (C+) show negative and positive samples, respectively. F, Forward; FAM, dye label; M, molecular size marker; MGB, minor groove binder; R, reverse