Figure 1.

Multiple sequence alignment of pilus predicted peptides from 12 strains used in the analysis (Table 1). These peptide sequences were produced from translating DNA sequences (see Table 1 for GenBank accession numbers). There are three domains in the pilus peptide: conserved domain (C: 1–53 amino acids), a semivariable domain (SV: 54–114 amino acids), and a hypervariable region (HV: variable number of amino acids starting at amino acid 132). The color shadings (white, gray, and black) indicate the variability of the sequence; we have white: high variability, gray: slightly variable, and black: highly conserved.