In:
Nature Communications, Springer Science and Business Media LLC, Vol. 9, No. 1 ( 2018-04-11)
Abstract:
Host immunity exerts strong selective pressure on pathogens. Population-level genetic analysis can identify signatures of this selection, but these signatures reflect the net selective effect of all hosts and vectors in a population. In contrast, analysis of pathogen diversity within hosts provides information on individual, host-specific selection pressures. Here, we combine these complementary approaches in an analysis of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum using haplotype sequences from thousands of natural infections in sub-Saharan Africa. We find that parasite genotypes show preferential clustering within multi-strain infections in young children, and identify individual amino acid positions that may contribute to strain-specific immunity. Our results demonstrate that natural host defenses to P. falciparum act in an allele-specific manner to block specific parasite haplotypes from establishing blood-stage infections. This selection partially explains the extreme amino acid diversity of many parasite antigens and suggests that vaccines targeting such proteins should account for allele-specific immunity.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
2041-1723
DOI:
10.1038/s41467-018-03807-7
Language:
English
Publisher:
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Publication Date:
2018
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2553671-0
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