Institute of Evolutionary Biology, and Centre for Immunity, Infection and Evolution, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
Department of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania.
Genome Biol Evol. 2019 Nov 1;11(11):3269-3274. doi: 10.1093/gbe/evz244.
The Laverania clade comprises the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum as well as at least seven additional parasite species that infect wild African apes. A recent analysis of Laverania genome sequences (Otto TD, et al. 2018. Genomes of all known members of a Plasmodium subgenus reveal paths to virulent human malaria. Nat Microbiol. 3: 687-697) reported three instances of interspecies gene transfer, one of which had previously been described. Generating gene sequences from additional ape parasites and re-examining sequencing reads generated in the Otto et al. study, we identified one of the newly described gene transfers as an assembly artifact of sequences derived from a sample coinfected by two parasite species. The second gene transfer between ancestors of two divergent chimpanzee parasite lineages was confirmed, but involved a much larger number of genes than originally described, many of which encode exported proteins that remodel, or bind to, erythrocytes. Because successful hybridization between Laverania species is very rare, it will be important to determine to what extent these gene transfers have shaped their host interactions.
拉弗拉尼娅进化枝包含人类疟原虫恶性疟原虫以及至少另外七种感染野生非洲猿的寄生虫物种。最近对拉弗拉尼娅基因组序列的分析（Otto TD 等人，2018. 所有已知疟原虫亚属成员的基因组揭示了导致人类疟疾的途径。Nat Microbiol. 3: 687-697）报告了三个种间基因转移的实例，其中一个以前已经描述过。从其他猿类寄生虫中生成基因序列，并重新检查 Otto 等人研究中生成的测序读数，我们发现新描述的基因转移之一是源自两种寄生虫物种混合感染的样本的序列组装伪影。两个不同的黑猩猩寄生虫谱系祖先之间的第二次基因转移得到了证实，但涉及的基因数量比最初描述的要多得多，其中许多基因编码的是重塑或结合红细胞的分泌蛋白。由于拉弗拉尼娅物种之间的成功杂交非常罕见，因此确定这些基因转移在多大程度上塑造了它们的宿主相互作用将非常重要。
