Figure 3

Genome plots of recently acquired islands in Synechococcus spp. WH8102, CC9605 and RS9917 and recruitment plots of environmental DNA fragments sampled during the GOS expedition [56]. Predicted islands are highlighted in grey, except the phycobilisome gene cluster which is highlighted in orange, and the giant open reading frames which are highlighted in blue. The frequency with which a gene appears among the 14 genomes analyzed is represented by an open circle (that is, a core gene is present in 14 genomes). Deviation in tetranucleotide frequency is plotted in red as the first principal component in overlapping six gene intervals relative to the mean of the entire genome (black line) and standard deviation (broken black lines). The position of tRNA genes (purple bars) and mobility genes, such as those encoding phage integrases and transposases, are also indicated (green bars). Note the good match (in most cases) between the location of islands (mainly predicted by deviation of tetranucleotide frequency) and a dramatic decrease of the frequency of hits from natural samples. This observation clearly demonstrates the strong variability of the gene content of islands.