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Updated: May 22, 2025

Protocol for Production of a Genetic Cross of the Rodent Malaria Parasites
Published on: January 3, 2011
Var genes, strain hyperdiversity, and malaria transmission dynamics
Karen P Day1, Mun Hua Tan1, Qixin He2
1Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Bio21 Institute and The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, The University of Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Abstract:
The microbiological paradigm for surveillance of diverse pathogens requires knowledge of the variation of the major surface antigen under the most intense immune selection as immune responses to these antigens drive transmission dynamics. This creates a pathway for population genetics/genomics to be combined with mathematical modelling to describe transmission dynamics to inform public health policy. Here we consider how we can bring population genetics and population dynamics together for a highly recombining pathogen like Plasmodium falciparum. We do this through the lens of what has been recently learnt about the population genetics of the var multigene family encoding the major surface antigen of the blood stages of Plasmodium falciparum, known as PfEMP1.
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