Evolutionary analysis of the most polymorphic gene family in malaria.

The gene family of the human malaria parasite encode proteins that are crucial determinants of both pathogenesis and immune evasion and are highly polymorphic. Here we have assembled nearly complete gene repertoires from 2398 field isolates and analysed a normalised set of 714 from across 12 countries. This therefore represents the first large scale attempt to catalogue the worldwide distribution of gene sequences We confirm the extreme polymorphism of this gene family but also demonstrate an unexpected level of sequence sharing both within and between continents.