An expanded global inventory of allelic variation in the most extremely polymorphic region of Plasmodium falciparum merozoite surface protein 1 provided by short read sequence data.

Allelic sequences of this extremely polymorphic locus have been derived from whole genome short read sequence data by mapping to a reference library followed by assembly of mapped reads. The catalogue of sequence variation has been greatly expanded, so that there are now more than 500 different msp1 block 2 allelic sequences described. This provides an extensive reference for molecular epidemiological genotyping and sequencing studies, and potentially for design of a multi-allelic vaccine.