Figure 2.

The rimP-leader. Highlighted boxes indicate putative ribosome binding sites. (a) rimP-leader identified in several Gammaproteobacteria (listed in Supplementary data 1 in Additional file 1), composed of a putative termination/antitermination structure (shown by thick arrows under the sequence) followed by the general rimP-leader motif described in the text. (b) rimP-leader found in the majority of species, including Firmicutes and Gammaproteobacteria. This leader sequence consists of a hairpin that is G-rich on its 5' arm and C-rich on its 3' arm, followed by the T-stretch characterizing Rho-independent terminators. The black arrow indicates the transcription start site recently detected by deep sequencing [46]. Sequence logos were produced using Weblogo [81].