The P. falciparum Community Project connects multiple research groups, each acquiring data on parasite genome variation — often in different geographical locations and for different scientific reasons. Working with this community, our long-term goal is to generate accessible information to improve malaria control.

The project is managed by the MalariaGEN Resource Centre. See the P. falciparum Community Project description for more information on the project structure, and data release and publication policies.

Our work is focused on four related objectives:

Building a catalogue of variation and allele frequencies

By aggregating data across many samples, we're able to identify thousands of variations with a high-level of confidence and estimate their frequencies in different groups of samples. We're building a catalogue of variation in the P. falciparum genome based on sequence data analysis, together with estimated allele frequencies in different geographical regions based on aggregated analysis of all the samples and data that have been contributed.

The catalogue is updated periodically — as the number of samples increases, as we incorporate data from different locations, and as sequencing technologies and analytical methods improve.

Providing researchers with standardised genotype data on their samples

Our sequence data analysis pipeline provides researchers with high-quality genotype calls on their samples in a standardised format which enables reliable comparisons to be made with data from other studies and geographical locations.

Publishing global analyses of genome variation, population genetics and evolutionary selection

We'll report on the major geographical divisions of parasite population structure and use this to calculate allele frequency data, as well as analysing other aspects of genome variation, population genetics and evolutionary selection that can best be achieved using the aggregated dataset. These global analyses will be reported through peer-reviewed publications subject to the agreement of the groups who have contributed samples and data. Where appropriate, this will be done through mechanisms such as the Pf3k Project that bring together expert working groups and integrate multiple sources of data to produce specific analytical outputs.

Creating online tools to maximise the reach and impact of project findings

We've developed a set of web tools to enable contributing researchers to explore and analyse sequence read data and genotype calls on their own samples. We have also partnered with the MRC Centre of Genomics and Global Health to build a comprehensive web application to provide the wider research community with user-friendly tools to browse and query project data (www.malariagen.net/apps/pf).