ArticleNucleic acids research2017
Extreme mutation bias and high AT content in Plasmodium falciparum.
Article in Nucleic acids research, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 92 papers.
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92 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Chromatin state dynamics during the Plasmodium falciparum intraerythrocytic development cycle.BMC genomics · 2026Article
- Association of hybridization and genome doubling with codon usage landscapes in the subgenomes of bread wheat.Frontiers in plant science · 2026Article
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- Molecular mechanisms underlying drug resistance in protozoan parasites: emerging mechanisms and therapeutic perspectives.Frontiers in parasitology · 2026Review
- Towards an evolutionary baseline model ofbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Mining expansin-like proteins from rumen microbiota and functional characterization of two anaerobic fungal expansin-like proteins.Journal of animal science and biotechnology · 2025Article
- A record-setting mitogenome in the holoparasitic plant Balanophora yakushimensis accompanied by exceptional loss of organellar DNA repair and recombination genes.BMC biology · 2025Article
- Plasmodium falciparum DNA repair dynamics reveal unique roles for TLS polymerases and PfRad51 in genome diversification.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Article
- Benchmarking and optimization of methods for the detection of identity-by-descent in high-recombiningeLife · 2025Article
- A tale of two parasites: a glimpse into the RNA methylome of patient-derived Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax isolates.Malaria journal · 2025Article
- Lost in translation: conserved amino acid usage despite extreme codon bias in foraminifera.mBio · 2025Article
- Diamonds in the rif: Alignment-free comparative genomics analysis reveals strain-transcendent Plasmodium falciparum antigens amidst extensive genetic diversity.Infection, genetics and evolution : journal of molecular epidemiology and evolutionary genetics in infectious diseases · 2025Article
- Analysis of the mitochondrial genome of Neuroctenus hainanensis and the phylogenetic position of Aradoidea.Scientific reports · 2025Article
32 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
For reasons that remain unknown, the Plasmodium falciparum genome has an exceptionally high AT content compared to other Plasmodium species and eukaryotes in general - nearly 80% in coding regions and approaching 90% in non-coding regions. Here, we examine how this phenomenon relates to genome-wide patterns of de novo mutation. Mutation accumulation experiments were performed by sequential cloning of six P. falciparum isolates growing in human erythrocytes in vitro for 4 years, with 279 clones sampled for whole genome sequencing at different time points. Genome sequence analysis of these samples revealed a significant excess of G:C to A:T transitions compared to other types of nucleotide substitution, which would naturally cause AT content to equilibrate close to the level seen across the P. falciparum reference genome (80.6% AT). These data also uncover an extremely high rate of small indel mutation relative to other species, primarily associated with repetitive AT-rich sequences, in addition to larger-scale structural rearrangements focused in antigen-coding var genes. In conclusion, high AT content in P. falciparum is driven by a systematic mutational bias and ultimately leads to an unusual level of microstructural plasticity, raising the question of whether this contributes to adaptive evolution.
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