Figure 1

Screenshot of electropherogram (GeneMapper^® software) displaying different artifacts: A) fluorescent background (right) and non-specific low background (left) in a field sample with 2 msp1 K1 alleles. The red striped line indicates the cut-off at 300 relative fluorescent units (rfu). B) Companion peak, to the left of a true peak of an msp1 K1 allele from a single laboratory line. C) Stutter peaks in a sample with the K1 laboratory line amplified with msp2 FC27 primers. The y-axis depicts the rfu while fragment size (sz) in base pair and rfu height (ht) for individual alleles is depicted on the x-axis. The rfu scale on the y-axis has been adjusted to focus on the artifacts.