The 25-megabase genome has not come easy. It's nearly 80% A-T rich, meaning that long stretches of adenine and thymine confound efforts to tally base pairs. The group, which includes collaborators at TIGR, the Sanger Centre, and Stanford University, has completed five of the organism's 14 chromosomes, but about 500 gaps remain—a majority of which reside in three particularly troublesome chromosomes. An estimated 40% to 50% of p. falciparum's 5,600-some-odd genes have no homologs in other organisms, and many have strange features such as interruptions in known functional binding domains.
These features may offer clues to the biology of malaria. Michael Ferdig, assistant professor, Notre Dame University, says, "The tantalizing bit is that we'll discover the malarial parasite has a distinct way of operating, a distinct way of evolving. Common sense tells you that's usually not the case, but these are the kinds of questions you can't start to answer ...
