Journal
NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
Volume 7, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
NATURE PORTFOLIO
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11078
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Funding
- National Institutes of Health [R01 AI097137, R01 AI091595, R37 AI050529, T32 AI007532, P30 AI045008]
- Burroughs Wellcome Fund [1012376]
- Agence Nationale de Recherche sur le Sida [ANRS 12125/12182/12255]
- Agence Nationale de Recherche (Project PRIMAL) [ANR 11 BSV3 021 01]
- Wellcome Trust [098051]
- Agence Nationale de Recherche (Programme Blanc, Sciences de la Vie, de la Sante et des Ecosystemes)
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African apes harbour at least six Plasmodium species of the subgenus Laverania, one of which gave rise to human Plasmodium falciparum. Here we use a selective amplification strategy to sequence the genome of chimpanzee parasites classified as Plasmodium reichenowi and Plasmodium gaboni based on the subgenomic fragments. Genome-wide analyses show that these parasites indeed represent distinct species, with no evidence of cross-species mating. Both P. reichenowi and P. gaboni are 10-fold more diverse than P. falciparum, indicating a very recent origin of the human parasite. We also find a remarkable Laverania-specific expansion of a multigene family involved in erythrocyte remodelling, and show that a short region on chromosome 4, which encodes two essential invasion genes, was horizontally transferred into a recent P. falciparum ancestor. Our results validate the selective amplification strategy for characterizing cryptic pathogen species, and reveal evolutionary events that likely predisposed the precursor of P. falciparum to colonize humans.
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