pfsmarrt PCR amplicon panel evaluation in cameroon

Plasmodium falciparum Streamlined Multiplex Antimalarial Resistance and Relatedness Testing (Pf-SMARRT) is a panel of 24 PCR amplicons (15 amplicons targeting drug resistance mutations and 9 amplicons targeting hypervariable regions) of the Plasmodium falciparum genome. Here, we evaluate the performance of this panel on control samples of known parasitemia and composition, as well as on 100 field samples from Cameroon. We also evaluate the performance of this amplicon panel on several pooled samples comprised of multiple individuals. This approach can be used to cheaply and easily sequence a large number of individuals to survey the spread of drug resistant malaria parasites as well as to track parasite relatedness. On control datasets, our panel is both sensitive and accurate, and is able to accurately call haplotype sequences down to 1 parasite/ul.