Evolutionary history of human Plasmodium vivax revealed by genome-wide analyses of related ape parasites

Significance Chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas harbor close relatives of human Plasmodium vivax , but current knowledge of these parasites is limited to a small number of gene fragments derived almost exclusively from mitochondrial DNA. We compared nearly full-length genomes of ape parasites with a global sample of human P. vivax and tested the function of human and ape P. vivax proteins believed to be important for erythrocyte binding. The results showed that ape parasites are 10-fold more diverse than human P. vivax and exhibit no evidence of species specificity, whereas human P. vivax represents a bottlenecked lineage that emerged from within this parasite group. Thus, African apes represent a large P. vivax reservoir whose impact on human malaria eradication requires careful monitoring.