Nair, S. et al. Genome Res. 24, 1028–1038 (2014).

In geographic regions with a high occurrence of malaria, it is common to see infections with several malarial species; these multiple-genotype infections drive the spread of drug resistance. To determine malarial genotypes, Nair et al. developed a single-cell approach in which they isolated single infected red blood cells, amplified the parasitic genome and then genotyped and sequenced it. Their approach had high accuracy on artificial mixtures of Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax. In real patient samples, the researchers determined the relatedness of haplotypes and the presence of drug-resistant alleles. The work has implications for treating malaria: the presence of multiple drug-resistance genes on the same haplotype would make treatment with these drugs ineffective, whereas occurrence of resistance genes on different haplotypes indicates that drug treatment is warranted.