The origin and geographical spread of Plasmodium falciparum is here determined by
analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequence polymorphism and divergence from its most
closely related species P. reichenowi (a rare parasite of chimpanzees). The complete 6 kb
mitochondrial genome was sequenced from the single known isolate of P. reichenowi and
from four different cultured isolates of P. falciparum, and aligned with the two previously
derived P. falciparum sequences. The extremely low synonymous nucleotide polymorphism …