Merozoite surface protein-3 alpha as a genetic marker for epidemiologic studies in Plasmodium vivax: a cautionary note

Table 3 Genetic diversity among PCR size classes and PCR-RFLP haplotypes for MSP-3α

PCR-RFLP group	Band size (bp)	n	Average pairwise divergence per site (SE)		Geographic origin of isolates
PCR-RFLP group	Band size (bp)	n	At all informative sites among the group	At sites shared by all isolates	Geographic origin of isolates
Size Class 1	1884-1950	27	0.052 (0.003)	0.029 (0.003)	Asia, Africa, South America^a
Size Class 2	1590-1644	10	0.031 (0.002)	0.016 (0.002)	Venezuela
Size Class 3	1449-1461	4	0.029 (0.002)	0.023 (0.003)	Brazil, Thailand, Malaysia
Size Class 4	1137-1149	6	0.024 (0.002)	0.024 (0.003)	Thailand, New Guinea
Size Class 5	1770	1	-	-	Indonesia
Haplotype 1.1	1896-1917	4	0.043 (0.003)	0.025 (0.003)	Korea, Mauritania, Thailand, Brazil
Haplotype 1.2	1896-1920	3	0.048 (0.003)	0.030 (0.004)	Thailand, Brazil
Haplotype 1.5	1929-1950	2	0.033 (0.003)	0.022 (0.004)	Vietnam, India
Haplotype 1.8	1908-1926	2	0.058 (0.005)	0.031 (0.005)	Panama, Indonesia
Haplotype 1.17	1884-1887	2	0.017 (0.002)	0.009 (0.002)	Thailand, Brazil
Haplotype 2.1	1620	5	0.002 (0.001)	0.002 (0.001)	Venezuela
Haplotype 3.2	2100	2	0.019 (0.003)	0.009 (0.003)	Thailand
Haplotype 4.1	1137	5	0.016 (0.002)	0.017 (0.003)	Thailand, New Guinea

Nucleotide diversity for the 5 PCR band sizes and the 8 PCR-RFLP haplotypes with more than one sample (n) is shown. Due to the size differences between alleles, the number of informative sites differs between analyses; both diversity as calculated for all informative sites within the group and only at the sites shared by all isolates in the total sample population (n = 48, number of informative sites = 1413) are shown for comparison. ^a Only the continents for the 27 sequences in PCR amplification size class 1 are listed.

ISSN: 1475-2875