Table 1.

Co-distribution of PQSs with variant-antigen-encoding gene families in Plasmodium spp.

Plasmodium spp.	No. genes in gene family	Mean distance from a PQS (kb)	Mean distance from a PQS in null dataset (kb)	Difference between actual & null data (kb)	Co-distribution (p-values)
P. falciparum	61	101.8	324.2	222.4	Y (p < 0.001)
P. berghei	217	356.3	414.2	57.9	Y (p = 0.021)

The distribution of distances between var or pir genes and their nearest PQS was compared to the distribution of distances in a simulated genome containing randomly-located genes. Differences between the actual and null datasets were assessed by Welch’s t-test (2-tailed)