ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2013
Malaria life cycle intensifies both natural selection and random genetic drift.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
49 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Phosphorylation in theJournal of proteome research · 2024Pooled it
- Multiple local PfDHFR I164L haplotype expansions drive Plasmodium falciparum antifolate resistance in Uganda.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Genetic diversity of the malaria vaccine candidate PfRIPR in a high transmission region of Senegal.iScience · 2026Article
- Rare variation in malaria parasites biases population-genetic inference.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Associations between precipitation, temperature, and malaria prevalence in children under 5 in Mali.PloS one · 2026Article
- Towards an evolutionary baseline model ofbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Heterogeneous constraint and adaptation across the malaria parasite life cycle.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Genetic Diversity of the Malaria Vaccine Candidate PfRIPR in a High Transmission Region of Senegal.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2025Article
- Preferential transmission of minority and drug-resistant clones in polyclonal infections in Mali.Malaria journal · 2025Article
- Population genomics of Plasmodium ovale species in sub-Saharan Africa.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Population genomics ofbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Evolution of pfhrp2 and pfhrp3 deletions in Equatorial Guinea between the pre- and post-RDT introduction.Malaria journal · 2024Article
- Modelling transmission dynamics and genomic diversity in a recombining parasite population.Wellcome open research · 2024Article
- Adherence to Anti-Malarial Treatment in Malaria Endemic Areas of Bangladesh.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Resolving drug selection and migration in an inbred South American Plasmodium falciparum population with identity-by-descent analysis.PLoS pathogens · 2022Article
- Structure-guided insights into potential function of novel genetic variants in the malaria vaccine candidate PfRh5.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Article
- Genomic epidemiological models describe pathogen evolution across fitness valleys.Science advances · 2022Article
- Plasmodium knowlesi: the game changer for malaria eradication.Malaria journal · 2022Review
- Review
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10 authors.
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Abstract
Analysis of genome sequences of 159 isolates of Plasmodium falciparum from Senegal yields an extraordinarily high proportion (26.85%) of protein-coding genes with the ratio of nonsynonymous to synonymous polymorphism greater than one. This proportion is much greater than observed in other organisms. Also unusual is that the site-frequency spectra of synonymous and nonsynonymous polymorphisms are virtually indistinguishable. We hypothesized that the complicated life cycle of malaria parasites might lead to qualitatively different population genetics from that predicted from the classical Wright-Fisher (WF) model, which assumes a single random-mating population with a finite and constant population size in an organism with nonoverlapping generations. This paper summarizes simulation studies of random genetic drift and selection in malaria parasites that take into account their unusual life history. Our results show that random genetic drift in the malaria life cycle is more pronounced than under the WF model. Paradoxically, the efficiency of purifying selection in the malaria life cycle is also greater than under WF, and the relative efficiency of positive selection varies according to conditions. Additionally, the site-frequency spectrum under neutrality is also more skewed toward low-frequency alleles than expected with WF. These results highlight the importance of considering the malaria life cycle when applying existing population genetic tools based on the WF model. The same caveat applies to other species with similarly complex life cycles.
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