Back

Antigenic diversity in malaria parasites is maintained on extrachromosomal DNA

Ebel, E. R.; Kim, B. Y.; McDew-White, M.; Egan, E. S.; Anderson, T. J.; Petrov, D. A.

2023-02-02 genetics
10.1101/2023.02.02.526885 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Sequence variation among antigenic var genes enables Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites to evade host immunity. Using long sequence reads from haploid clones from a mutation accumulation experiment, we detect var diversity inconsistent with simple chromosomal inheritance. We discover putatively circular DNA that is strongly enriched for var genes, which exist in multiple alleles per locus separated by recombination and indel events. Extrachromosomal DNA likely contributes to rapid antigenic diversification in P. falciparum.

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.