2025.12.03

An employee of the Institute of Zoology carried out a scientific internship at a Northern Bohemia institution in the Czech Republic

Turkan Gurbanova —  a senior researcher in the Protozoology Laboratory of the Institute of Zoology of MSE RA, and an associate professor holding a PhD in Biology — from 25 October to 29 November 2025 undertook a scientific internship at the Parasitology Laboratory of the Faculty of Science at the North Bohemia University (Czech Republic). The internship was conducted under the project “Molecular-method (DNA  amplification, PCR, phylogeny) application for the study of intestinal parasites of reptiles (lizards, turtles, snakes)”. The project was funded by the Visegrad Fund, and the internship was carried out under the supervision of Professor Jana Kvicerová at that laboratory.

During the internship, genomic DNA from protozoa parasitizing the blood and digestive system of reptiles was amplified using the FastDNA® SPIN Kit for Soil (MP Biomedicals). To evaluate the phylogeny and evolutionary relationships of the parasitic protozoa, PCR was performed using various genes — nuclear 18S rRNA, mitochondrial COI, mitochondrial COIII, Cryptosporidium gp 60, Cryptosporidium actin. The resulting amplicons were enzymatically purified and then subjected to Sanger sequencing. The obtained sequences were identified, assembled and edited using BLAST ([www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)). Alignments were then created and phylogenetic analysis carried out using different software tools (MrBayes, PhyML, RAxML, Geneious, etc.), employing two phylogenetic approaches — Bayesian inference and Maximum Likelihood. The phylogenetic trees were visualized using TreeView.