The Evolution of gene families in Plasmodium

Thomas Otto
Welcome Trust Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK, tdo@sanger.ac.uk

(Seminar in English)

To date, the genomes of most of the major mammal-infective Plasmodium species have been published. Interestingly, we find that around 80% of the gene content is shared in single gene copies through all mammal and avian malaria genomes. However, we see a vast diversity of gene content in the subtelomeric regions that are not shared through all the species which is little understood. Some of those genes are involved in host-parasite interaction, cytoadherence, invasion or virulence. To understand the diversity of those gene families and perform comparative analysis, more samples are needed. In my talk I will first focus on tools to generate high quality genomes with long reads to be able to access those variable gene families. Then I will discuss the evolution, distribution and structure of three malaria gene families involved in parasite host interaction, invasion and virulence in the avian malaria and the laverania sub-genus that contains P. falciparum.

Recent publications:

Otto et al, A comprehensive evaluation of rodent malaria parasite genomes and gene expression. BMC Biology 2014.

Otto et al, Genome sequencing of chimpanzee malaria parasites reveals possible pathways of adaptation to human hosts. Nature Communication 2014

Swain et al, A post-assembly genome-improvement toolkit (PAGIT) to obtain annotated genomes from contigs. Nature Protocols 2012