Very large long-term effective population size in the virulent human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum.

ABSTRACT: 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.

SUBMITTER: Hughes AL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1088819 | biostudies-other | 2001 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other