PMC3310105_01
Morphologic appearance of infected erythrocytes of a 57-year-old woman in China and immunofluorescent antibody test results. A) Giemsa-stained thin blood smear showing erythrocyte infected with multiple ring forms (arrowhead). Scale bar = 10 microm; original magnification x100. B) Patient serum reactive against Colpodella antigen. Scale bar = 20 microm; original magnification x40. C) Healthy control serum not reactive against Colpodella antigen. Scale bar = 20 microm; original magnification x40. D) Patient serum not reactive (green fluorescence) against Babesia microti antigen. Scale bar = 20 microm; original magnification x40. E) B. microti-infected mouse serum reactive against B. microti antigen. Scale bar = 20 microm; original magnification x40.
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F1
A peripheral blood smear showed many erythrocytes that contained parasites (Figure 1, panel A). Convalescent-phase serum from the patient 3 months after the onset of infection was strongly reactive against Colpodella antigen; serum from a healthy control was nonreactive (Figure 1, panels B and C). Serum from the patient did not react against Babesia microti antigen (Figure 1, panels D and E).
Maximum-likelihood small subunit rDNA phylogenetic tree showing the position of a novel human erythrocytic parasite (in box). Numbers above nodes represent Bayesian posterior probabilities computed by using MrBayes 3.1.2 (www.phylogeny.fr/version2_cgi/one_task.cgi?task_type=mrbayes), with priors set to defaults and a Markov chain Monte Carlo run for 1,000,000 generations of which the first 100,000 were omitted from topology reconstruction. Numbers below nodes depict maximum-likelihood bootstrap support computed from 1,000 replications with the software and model described above. These numbers are bootstrap numbers and refer to the statistical confidence for that node as estimated by the different phylogenetic reconstruction methods. Scale bar indicates 1 base substitution/10 nt.
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F2
More specifically, in all analyses it appeared to be the sister of a well-supported group consisting of members of the genera Colpodella and Chromera (Figure 2).