Alignment of P. falciparum CRT protein and putative orthologs with intron positions and phases. P.fal, P.yoe, P.cha, and P.viv indicate P. falciparum, P. yoelii, P. chabaudi (a rodent malaria most closely related to P. yoelii), and P. vivax, respectively. P. vivax and P. chabaudi sequences and intron–exon structures are from GenBank accession numbers AF314649 and AY304549, respectively. Gray boxes indicate intron positions that have undergone a change since the P. falciparum–P. yoelii divergence. The first position shows a loss in rodent malarias, the second either a loss in P. falciparum or a gain in the other species. The first position did not pass the filter because of the high degree of sequence divergence in the flanking coding region, although the presence of well-characterized homologs for several species in GenBank indicates that it is a bona fide change.
