Figure 2

Physical and genetic maps of the 14 P. falciparum chromosomes in the 7G8 × GB4 cross. The vertical red scale lines on the left indicate genetic distance in centimorgans, and the blue vertical lines on the right are the physical distance in kilobases. Thin grey lines connect the genetic position of each marker (3,184 mSFP and 254 microsatellite markers) with their mapped physical positions on the chromosome. Please see Additional file 3 for detailed information. Note the elevated recombination activities at chromosome ends, particularly those at ends of chromosomes 2, 3, 4, 8, and 9, which increase the estimate of genome-wide recombination rate. Maps after removing subtelomeric markers are shown in Additional file 10. The arrowheads on the right side of the blue vertical lines indicate the positions of putative centromeres for the 14 chromosomes according to [11].