Plasmodium falciparum field isolates from areas of repeated emergence of drug resistant malaria show no evidence of hypermutator phenotype

Relative rates of synonymous substitutions (open circles) and parasite clearance half-lives after artemisinin treatment (filled circles) for P. falciparum field isolates from Cambodia (blue circles) and Mali (green circles). Parasites from Cambodia have slower parasite clearance times, but do not exhibit faster relative rates of nucleotide substitution when compared to West African isolates. Relative substitution rates shown were estimated using Tajima's relative rate test (see Section 2) to compare each isolate against a single calibrator isolate, i.e. the isolate with fewest number of unique substitutions versus the outgroup P. reichenowi.101