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 …