Fig. 3

ML phylogenetic tree of Plasmodium falcipains. Plasmodium falcipains form two separated clades of Hb-specific falcipains (pink area) and invasion-specific falcipains (light blue area). The expansion of Hb-specific falcipains in human/primate Plasmodium occurred separately in P. falciparum/P. reichenowi lineage (red branch line) and P. vivax/P. knowlesi lineage (blue branch line). Falcipain expansion is not evident in P. yoelii/P. berghei lineage (green branch line). Numeric value shown on the branch indicates ML support value above 75 % based on 100 replicates bootstrap. NJ phylogenetic tree was also inferred. Bootstrap value for NJ tree was calculated from 1000 tree replicates. Both NJ and ML trees have comparable tree topology (data not shown) with high bootstrap support. Only ML tree is shown here. Star indicates that the node has <75 % NJ bootstrap support. Sequences shown here were given code name (see Additional file 1)