Identification of the four species of human malaria parasites by nested PCR that targets variant sequences in the small subunit rRNA gene

Abstract

A polymorphic region of the small subunit rRNA gene of the four human malaria parasite species was sequenced to see intraspecies variations. Two new variant sequences were found in P. ovale and P. malariae. Based on these sequences together with those published, we have designed species-specific primers that identify the four species of human malaria parasites by nested PCR following amplification of the polymorphic region with interspecies conserved primers. Our method detected the P. ovale variant which had a sequence undetected by a microtiter plate hybridization (MPH) method and had higher detection level in P. malariae species than MPH.