Abstract
The mosquito-borne malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum kills an estimated 0.7–2.7 million people every year, primarily children in sub-Saharan Africa. Without effective interventions, a variety of factors—including the spread of parasites resistant to antimalarial drugs and the increasing insecticide resistance of mosquitoes—may cause the number of malaria cases to double over the next two decades1. To stimulate basic research and facilitate the development of new drugs and vaccines, the genome of Plasmodium falciparum clone 3D7 has been sequenced using a chromosome-by-chromosome shotgun strategy2,3,4. We report here the nucleotide sequences of chromosomes 10, 11 and 14, and a re-analysis of the chromosome 2 sequence5. These chromosomes represent about 35% of the 23-megabase P. falciparum genome.
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Acknowledgements
We thank our colleagues at The Institute for Genomic Research and the Naval Medical Research Center for support; J. Foster for providing markers for chromosome 14; R. Huestis and K. Fischer for providing RT–PCR data for chromosomes 2 and 3 before publication; and S. Cawley for assistance with phat. This work was supported by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Naval Medical Research Center, and the US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.
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Gardner, M., Shallom, S., Carlton, J. et al. Sequence of Plasmodium falciparum chromosomes 2, 10, 11 and 14. Nature 419, 531–534 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01094
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature01094
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