Letter abstract
Nature Genetics 39, 120 - 125 (2006)
Published online: 10 December 2006 | Corrected online: 8 February 2007 | doi:10.1038/ng1931
There is a Corrigendum (March 2007) associated with this Letter.
Genome variation and evolution of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum
Daniel C Jeffares1, Arnab Pain2, Andrew Berry2, Anthony V Cox1, James Stalker1, Catherine E Ingle1, Alan Thomas3, Michael A Quail2, Kyle Siebenthall1,4, Anne-Catrin Uhlemann5, Sue Kyes6, Sanjeev Krishna5, Chris Newbold6, Emmanouil T Dermitzakis1 & Matthew Berriman2
Infections with the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum result in more than 1 million deaths each year worldwide1. Deciphering the evolutionary history and genetic variation of P. falciparum is critical for understanding the evolution of drug resistance, identifying potential vaccine candidates and appreciating the effect of parasite variation on prevalence and severity of malaria in humans. Most studies of natural variation in P. falciparum have been either in depth over small genomic regions (up to the size of a small chromosome2) or genome wide but only at low resolution3. In an effort to complement these studies with genome-wide data, we undertook shotgun sequencing of a Ghanaian clinical isolate (with fivefold coverage), the IT laboratory isolate (with onefold coverage) and the chimpanzee parasite P. reichenowi (with twofold coverage). We compared these sequences with the fully sequenced P. falciparum 3D7 isolate genome4. We describe the most salient features of P. falciparum polymorphism and adaptive evolution with relation to gene function, transcript and protein expression and cellular localization. This analysis uncovers the primary evolutionary changes that have occurred since the P. falciparum–P. reichenowi speciation and changes that are occurring within P. falciparum.
NOTE: In the original version of this paper, the authors failed to acknowledge that sequencing of the P. falciparum IT laboratory isolate was funded by a European Union 6th Framework Program grant to the BioMalPar Consortium (contract number LSHP-LT-2004-503578). This error has been corrected in the PDF version of the article.
- Informatics Division, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, CB10 1SA Hinxton, UK.
- Pathogen Sequencing Unit, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, CB10 1SA Hinxton, UK.
- Biomedical Primate Research Centre, Lange Kleiweg 139, Rijswijk, Postbus 3306, 2280 GH Rijswijk, The Netherlands.
- Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
- St. George's, University of London, Cranmer Terrace, London SW17 ORE, UK.
- The Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford OX3 9DS, UK.
Correspondence to: Emmanouil T Dermitzakis1 e-mail: md4@sanger.ac.uk
Correspondence to: Matthew Berriman2 e-mail: mb4@sanger.ac.uk
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RESEARCH
A genome-wide map of diversity in Plasmodium falciparumNature Genetics Letter (01 Jan 2007)
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