Figure 2.

A 40 bp region upstream of the P. yoelii gene PY02186 conserved beyond the neutral background. The region is shown with corresponding orthologous sequences of P. chabaudi, P. berghei. The conservation pattern of the highlighted block – in addition to 609 other blocks in the P. yoelii genome – has a less than 10^-6 probability of occurring by chance, based on silent site substitution patterns. While the unhighlighted sections are mostly conserved as well, the highlighted region stands out for its high density of conserved G's and C's, which are rare (6.3%) in 4-fold degenerate positions.