Detecting selection using a single genome sequence of M. tuberculosis and P. falciparum

Selective pressures on proteins are usually measured by comparing nucleotide sequences1. Here we introduce a method to detect selection on the basis of a single genome sequence. We catalogue the relative strength of selection on each gene in the entire genomes of Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Plasmodium falciparum. Our analysis confirms that most antigens are under strong selection for amino-acid substitutions, particularly the PE/PPE family2 of putative surface proteins in M. tuberculosis and the EMP1 family3 of cytoadhering surface proteins in P. falciparum. We also identify many uncharacterized proteins that are under strong selection in each pathogen. We provide a genome-wide analysis of natural selection acting on different stages of an organism's life cycle: genes expressed in the ring stage4 of P. falciparum are under stronger positive selection than those expressed in other stages of the parasite's life cycle. Our method of estimating selective pressures requires far fewer data than comparative sequence analysis, and it measures selection across an entire genome; the method can readily be applied to a large range of sequenced organisms.