High Genetic Diversity of Plasmodium falciparum in the Low-Transmission Setting of the Kingdom of Eswatini.

Background: To better understand transmission dynamics, we characterized Plasmodium falciparum genetic diversity in Eswatini, where transmission is low and sustained by importation.

Methods: Twenty-six P. falciparum microsatellites were genotyped in 66% of confirmed cases (2014-2016; N = 582).

FLASH: a next-generation CRISPR diagnostic for multiplexed detection of antimicrobial resistance sequences.

The growing prevalence of deadly microbes with resistance to previously life-saving drug therapies is a dire threat to human health. Detection of low abundance pathogen sequences remains a challenge for metagenomic Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). We introduce FLASH (Finding Low Abundance Sequences by Hybridization), a next-generation CRISPR/Cas9 diagnostic method that takes advantage of the efficiency, specificity and flexibility of Cas9 to enrich for a programmed set of sequences.

Using parasite genetic and human mobility data to infer local and cross-border malaria connectivity in Southern Africa.

Local and cross-border importation remain major challenges to malaria elimination and are difficult to measure using traditional surveillance data. To address this challenge, we systematically collected parasite genetic data and travel history from thousands of malaria cases across northeastern Namibia and estimated human mobility from mobile phone data. We observed strong fine-scale spatial structure in local parasite populations, providing positive evidence that the majority of cases were due to local transmission.