[Sequence analysis of apical membrane antigen I from a Plasmodium falciparum isolate collected from Mengpeng...

Genomic DNA from a Plasmodium falciparum isolate (CMP-1) collected from a falciparum malaria patient at Mengpeng Township, Mengla County, Yunnan Province was used as the template for PCR amplification primered with oligonucleotides from the conserved regions of the apical membrane antigen I (AMA-1) as reported. PCR products recovered from the low melting-point agarose gel electrophoresis were digested with BamHI and EcoRI to generate fragments approximately 420, 445 and 900 bp which were used as the inserts to insert into the M13 mp8 and M13 mp9 vectors for sequencing using 373 sequencer. 1773 bases were read out, among which 17 point mutations were found to result in substitutions of 15 codens which were non-synonymous mutations except for one as compared with that of the consensus. In particular, a relatively hot region of variation was apparent between amino acids 160 and 210.