MBE Advance Access originally published online on May 18, 2005
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2005 22(8):1733-1739; doi:10.1093/molbev/msi168
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Mitochondrial Genome Sequences Support Ancient Population Expansion in Plasmodium vivax




* Department of Molecular Epidemiology, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan;
Department of Parasitology, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand;
Department of Laboratory Investigation, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan;
Departamento de Parasitologia, Instituto de Ciências Biomédicas da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; || Department of Protozoology, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan; ¶ Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina
E-mail: austin{at}biol.sc.edu.
Examination of nucleotide diversity in 106 mitochondrial genomes of the most geographically widespread human malaria parasite, Plasmodium vivax, revealed a level of diversity similar to, but slightly higher than, that seen in the virulent human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum. The pairwise distribution of nucleotide differences among mitochondrial genome sequences supported the hypothesis that both these parasites underwent ancient population expansions. We estimated the age of the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of the mitochondrial genomes of both P. vivax and P. falciparum at around 200,000300,000 years ago. This is close to the previous estimates of the time of the human mitochondrial MRCA and the origin of modern Homo sapiens, consistent with the hypothesis that both these Plasmodium species were parasites of the hominid lineage before the origin of modern H. sapiens and that their population expansion coincided with the population expansion of their host.
Key Words: bottleneck malaria Plasmodium vivax Plasmodium falciparum population expansion
![]()
CiteULike
Connotea
Del.icio.us What's this?
This article has been cited by other articles:
![]() |
A. R. Jex, R. S. Hall, D. T. J. Littlewood, and R. B. Gasser An integrated pipeline for next-generation sequencing and annotation of mitochondrial genomes Nucleic Acids Res., January 1, 2010; 38(2): 522 - 533. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
D. J. Conway Molecular Epidemiology of Malaria Clin. Microbiol. Rev., January 1, 2007; 20(1): 188 - 204. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||
![]() |
M. Imwong, D. Sudimack, S. Pukrittayakamee, L. Osorio, J. M. Carlton, N. P. J. Day, N. J. White, and T. J. C. Anderson Microsatellite Variation, Repeat Array Length, and Population History of Plasmodium vivax Mol. Biol. Evol., May 1, 2006; 23(5): 1016 - 1018. [Full Text] [PDF] |
||||


