Abstract
The malaria parasite species, Plasmodium vivax infects not only humans, but also African apes. Human specific P. vivax has evolved from a single ancestor that originated from a parasite of African apes. Although previous studies have proposed phylogenetic trees positioning P. vivax (the common ancestor of human and African ape P. vivax) within the assemblages of Asian primate parasites, its position has not yet been robustly confirmed. We determined nearly complete apicoplast genome sequences from seven Asian primate parasites, Plasmodium cynomolgi (strains Ceylonensis and Berok), P. knowlesi P. fragile, P. fieldi, P. simiovale, P. hylobati, P. inui, and an African primate parasite, P. gonderi, that infects African guenon. Phylogenetic relationships of the Plasmodium species were analyzed using newly and previously determined apicoplast genome sequences. Multigene maximum likelihood analysis of 30 protein coding genes did not position P. vivax within the Asian primate parasite clade but positioned it basal to the clade, after the branching of an African guenon parasite, P. gonderi. The result does not contradict with the emerging notion that P. vivax phylogenetically originated from Africa. The result is also supported by phylogenetic analyses performed using massive nuclear genome data of seven primate Plasmodium species.
Highlights
Malaria, one of the most serious infectious diseases, remains a major source of global morbidity and mortality in the tropics and is caused by the genus Plasmodium
All the Plasmodium apicoplast genomes contained genes for small subunit (SSU) and large subunit (LSU) rRNAs, 25 species of tRNAs, 17 ribosomal proteins, 3 subunits of RNA polymerase, elongation factor Tu, caseinolytic protease C, sulfur mobilizing protein B, and 7 open reading frames of unknown function (Supplementary Table S2), all packed in the genome tightly with short intergenic regions
Compared to the mitochondrial genomes of Plasmodium species with around 70% A + T content[10], apicoplast genomes sequenced in this study showed high A + T content, ranging from 86.5% (P. knowlesi) to 87.1% (P. inui), consistent with the average A + T richness of previously reported nine Plasmodium species[5]
Summary
One of the most serious infectious diseases, remains a major source of global morbidity and mortality in the tropics and is caused by the genus Plasmodium. Genome analyses of P. ovale and P. malariae were completed in 2017 and branching positions of these two species were clearly resolved by multigene phylogeny of nuclear genome-encoded genes[7]; the positions were identical with those of the ML tree of apicoplast phylogeny[5,6]. The branching position of P. vivax, including both the human and ape parasites in the tree of the genus Plasmodium, has not clearly been revealed, because taxon sampling of the trees in the above reports were sometimes sparse lacking major Plasmodium lineages except for Asian primate Plasmodium species. Since an African guenon parasite, P. gonderi, is important to infer phylogenetic relationships between P. vivax and Asian primate parasites, we here included the data from P. gonderi and examined multi-gene phylogeny using apicoplast genome-encoded and nuclear genome-encoded genes
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