Medical Research Council Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis, Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, Imperial College London, London, UK.
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Warren Alpert Medical School, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA.
Nat Commun. 2020 Apr 30;11(1):2107. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-15779-8.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) harbors 11% of global malaria cases, yet little is known about the spatial and genetic structure of the parasite population in that country. We sequence 2537 Plasmodium falciparum infections, including a nationally representative population sample from DRC and samples from surrounding countries, using molecular inversion probes - a high-throughput genotyping tool. We identify an east-west divide in haplotypes known to confer resistance to chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine. Furthermore, we identify highly related parasites over large geographic distances, indicative of gene flow and migration. Our results are consistent with a background of isolation by distance combined with the effects of selection for antimalarial drug resistance. This study provides a high-resolution view of parasite genetic structure across a large country in Africa and provides a baseline to study how implementation programs may impact parasite populations.
刚果民主共和国（DRC）拥有全球 11%的疟疾病例，但对于该国寄生虫种群的空间和遗传结构却知之甚少。我们使用分子反转探针（一种高通量基因分型工具）对 2537 例疟原虫感染进行了测序，包括来自刚果民主共和国的全国代表性人群样本和来自周边国家的样本。我们发现了一种已知对氯喹和磺胺多辛-乙胺嘧啶具有抗性的单倍型的东西向划分。此外，我们还在大地理距离上发现了高度相关的寄生虫，表明存在基因流动和迁移。我们的研究结果与隔离距离背景相结合，同时也与抗疟药物耐药性选择的影响一致。本研究提供了对非洲一个大国寄生虫遗传结构的高分辨率视图，并为研究实施计划如何影响寄生虫种群提供了基线。
