title: Pilot survey of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from the asexual blood stages of Plasmodium vivax in human patients.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Plasmodium vivax is the most widely distributed human malaria, responsible for 70-80 million clinical cases each year and large socio-economical burdens for countries such as Brazil where it is the most prevalent species. Unfortunately, due to the impossibility of growing this parasite in continuous in vitro culture, research on P. vivax remains largely neglected.
  
  
  METHODS
  A pilot survey of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from the asexual blood stages of P. vivax was performed. To do so, 1,184 clones from a cDNA library constructed with parasites obtained from 10 different human patients in the Brazilian Amazon were sequenced. Sequences were automatedly processed to remove contaminants and low quality reads. A total of 806 sequences with an average length of 586 bp met such criteria and their clustering revealed 666 distinct events. The consensus sequence of each cluster and the unique sequences of the singlets were used in similarity searches against different databases that included P. vivax, Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium yoelii, Plasmodium knowlesi, Apicomplexa and the GenBank non-redundant database. An E-value of <10(-30) was used to define a significant database match. ESTs were manually assigned a gene ontology (GO) terminology
  
  
  RESULTS
  A total of 769 ESTs could be assigned a putative identity based upon sequence similarity to known proteins in GenBank. Moreover, 292 ESTs were annotated and a GO terminology was assigned to 164 of them.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These are the first ESTs reported for P. vivax and, as such, they represent a valuable resource to assist in the annotation of the P. vivax genome currently being sequenced. Moreover, since the GC-content of the P. vivax genome is strikingly different from that of P. falciparum, these ESTs will help in the validation of gene predictions for P. vivax and to create a gene index of this malaria parasite.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Parasitologia, ICB, Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil. efmerino@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Emilio F
authors.initials: EF
authors.lastname: Merino
authors.forename: Carmen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Fernandez-Becerra
authors.forename: Alda M B N
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Madeira
authors.forename: Ariane L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Machado
authors.forename: Alan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Durham
authors.forename: Arthur
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Gruber
authors.forename: Neil
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hall
authors.forename: Hernando A
authors.initials: HA
authors.lastname: del Portillo
mesh_terms: D020856:AT Rich Sequence / Q000235:genetics; D000818:Animals; D001938:Brazil; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D015723:Gene Library; D017125:Genes, Protozoan / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D016780:Malaria, Vivax / Q000097:blood* / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000469:parasitology*; D010865:Pilot Projects; D010963:Plasmodium falciparum / Q000235:genetics; D010966:Plasmodium vivax / Q000235:genetics* / Q000254:growth & development* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D009626:Terminology as Topic