FIGURE 3: Phylogenetic tree of putative flippases.
Four of five Plasmodium berghei putative aminophospholipid-transporting P4-type ATPases were shown to be essential for blood-stage development in vivo. This is a maximum likelihood tree based on the complete sequences of the identified orthologues along with models of all the domain architectures. Nodes with support values <50 are left unresolved. This unrooted tree shows low resolution at the base, making it difficult to interpret their phylogenetic history despite the fact that the proteins share their structures. ATP8 forms a well-supported clade with orthologues from a variety of species, while the apicomplexan branches with poor orthology assignments (GCα, GCβ, and ATP7) resolve well supporting the candidacy of GCα and ATP7 as therapeutic drug targets.