Expression of 8 genes was measured to confirm the RNA-seq results on the Rotor-Gene qPCR system (QIAGEN). Gene levels transcripts were evaluated with serial dilutions of plasmids (GenScript). Results were normalized with a housekeeping gene expression and accounting for the parasite’s developmental stage (Supplementary Method). var genes expression was assessed by 3 independent methods. Published DBLα primers [12 (link)] and newly developed primers targeting the ATS domain (ATS-2 primers based on varDB dataset [31 (link)], Supplemental Data 2) were used on the Rotor-Gene qPCR system (QIAGEN) following the same methodology. The qPCR-TaqMan developed by Hofmann et al [32 (link)] targeting the ATS domain (ATS-1) was performed on a Viia7 qPCR system (Applied Biosystems) (Supplementary Method).