Table 1. Plasmodium falciparum nuclear genome summary and comparison to other organisms.
| Feature | Value |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P. falciparum | S. pombe | S. cerevisiae | D. discoideum | A. thaliana | |
| Size (bp) | 22,853,764 | 12,462,637 | 12,495,682 | 8,100,000 | 115,409,949 |
| (G + C) content (%) | 19.4 | 36.0 | 38.3 | 22.2 | 34.9 |
| No. of genes | 5,268* | 4,929 | 5,770 | 2,799 | 25,498 |
| Mean gene length† (bp) | 2,283 | 1,426 | 1,424 | 1,626 | 1,310 |
| Gene density (bp per gene) | 4,338 | 2,528 | 2,088 | 2,600 | 4,526 |
| Per cent coding | 52.6 | 57.5 | 70.5 | 56.3 | 28.8 |
| Genes with introns (%) | 53.9 | 43 | 5.0 | 68 | 79 |
| Exons | |||||
| Number | 12,674 | ND | ND | 6,398 | 132,982 |
| No. per gene | 2.39 | ND | NA | 2.29 | 5.18 |
| (G + C) content (%) | 23.7 | 39.6 | 28.0 | 28.0 | ND |
| Mean length (bp) | 949 | ND | ND | 711 | 170 |
| Total length (bp) | 12,028,350 | ND | ND | 4,548,978 | 33,249,250 |
| Introns | |||||
| Number | 7,406 | 4,730 | 272 | 3,587 | 107,784 |
| (G + C) content (%) | 13.5 | ND | NA | 13.0 | ND |
| Mean length (bp) | 178.7 | 81 | NA | 177 | 170 |
| Total length (bp) | 1,323,509 | 383,130 | ND | 643,899 | 18,055,421 |
| Intergenic regions | |||||
| (G + C) content (%) | 13.6 | ND | ND | 14.0 | ND |
| Mean length (bp) | 1,694 | 952 | 515 | 786 | ND |
| RNAs | |||||
| No. of tRNA genes | 43 | 174 | ND | 73 | ND |
| No. of 5S rRNA genes | 3 | 30 | ND | NA | ND |
| No. of 5.8S, 18S and 28S rRNA units | 7 | 200–400 | ND | NA | 700–800 |
ND, not determined; NA, not applicable. ‘No. of genes’ for D. discoideum are for chromosome 2 (ref. 155) and in some cases represent extrapolations to the entire genome. Sources of data for the other organisms: S. pombe65, S. cerevisiae156, D. discoideum155 and A. thaiiana157.
*
70% of these genes matched expressed sequence tags or encoded proteins detected by proteomics analyses14,15.
†
Excluding introns.