Whole genome sequencing analysis of Plasmodium vivax using whole genome capture

Malaria caused by Plasmodium vivax is an experimentally neglected severe disease with a substantial burden on human health. Because of technical limitations, little is known about the biology of this important human pathogen. Whole genome analysis

The whole genome capture technique will enable more efficient whole genome analysis of P. vivax from a larger geographic region and from valuable archived sample collections.

Here we show that in-solution hybridization capture can be used to extract P. vivax DNA from human contaminating DNA in the laboratory without the need for on-site leukocyte filtration. Using a whole genome capture method, we were able to enrich P. vivax DNA from bulk genomic DNA from less than 0.5% to a median of 55% (range 20%-80%). This level of enrichment allows for efficient analysis of the samples by whole genome sequencing and does not introduce any gross biases into the data. With this method, we obtained greater than 5X coverage across 93% of the P. vivax genome for four P. vivax strains from Iquitos, Peru, which is similar to our results using leukocyte filtration (greater than 5X coverage across 96% ).