Fig. 2

Conservation of the unusual var gene var1csa in P. reichenowi, P. praefalciparum and P. falciparum. A A phylogenetic tree of the Laverania as described by Otto et al. [12]. B Identification of var1csa in P. falciparum (isolate SN1) and its orthologues in P. reichenowi and P. praefalciparum. The chromosomal region from each species containing the var gene with the highest sequence identity to var1csa from P. falciparum is shown. var genes are shown in blue and members of other multicopy gene families are shown in green. The genes with the highest sequence identity to var1csa in each species are aligned, and the percentage identity is shown below the gene. For P. reichenowi and P. praefalciparum, sequence identity exceeds 90%, and the genes display clear synteny (boxed in blue). For the remainder of the Laverania, the sequence identity is substantially lower and the most similar gene is not located in the syntenic position, indicating these species do not contain true orthologues of var1csa