Very large long-term effective population size in the virulent human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.
It has been proposed that the virulent human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum underwent a recent severe population bottleneck. In order to test this hypothesis, we estimated the effective population size of this species from the patterns of nucleotide substitution at 23 nuclear protein-coding loci, using a variety of methods based on coalescent theory. Both simple methods and phylogenetically based maximum-likelihood methods yielded the conclusion that the effective population size of this species has been of the order of at least 10(5) for the past 300,000-400,000 years.
Hughes
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Department of Biological Sciences, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA. austin@biol.sc.edu
Verra
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D000483:Alleles; D000818:Animals; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D017125:Genes, Protozoan; D006801:Humans; D016778:Malaria, Falciparum / Q000469:parasitology; D010963:Plasmodium falciparum / Q000235:genetics* / Q000472:pathogenicity; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D011156:Population Density; D013997:Time Factors; D014774:Virulence