Plasmodium cynomolgi genome sequences provide insight into Plasmodium vivax and the monkey malaria clade

Plasmodium vivax is the most prevalent human malaria parasite species outside Africa, but control of vivax malaria is a challenge due to its wider transmission and capacity to establish latent liver stages that re-emerge months or years following an initial mosquito bite. P. vivax is closely related to a group of monkey malaria species, including its sister taxon Plasmodium cynomolgi, which infect Asian Old World monkeys (OWMs): P. vivax is thought to have become a human parasite by host switch from an Asian OWM malaria species. Since P. cynomolgi shares many phenotypic, biologic and genetic characteristics of P. vivax, we generated draft genome sequences of three P. cynomolgi strains and performed comparative genomic analysis between them and P. vivax, as well as a third previously sequenced simian parasite, P. knowlesi.