Fig. 1.

Construction of PbVac MCB. PbVac parasites underwent 3 consecutive cyclic passages through mice and mosquitoes prior to clonal expansion in a final batch of mice. Blood collected from these mice was aliquoted and stored to constitute the PbVac MCB, and tested for microbiological contamination. In parallel, the parental wild-type Pb parasite underwent a similar procedure and was subsequently aliquoted and stored. The whole genomes of both parasites were sequenced before and after cyclical propagation and clonal expansion. SPF-certified BALB/cByJ mice were used in all steps of the procedure