Figure 4. SimPlot analysis.

Similarity plots with plasmids R751, pBP136 and pB3 as reference plasmids. Each coloured plot corresponds to a specific plasmid depicted in the colour shemes to the right and demonstrates the genetic distances from each plasmid to the reference strain in different parts of the genome. The similarity plot of R751 (a) highlights one putative recombination event in plasmid pB3 and three putative recombination events in plasmid pBP136. The similarity plots of these two plasmids (b, c) demonstrate that none of the plasmids included in this study are donors of the recombinant regions in pBP136. Instead, other plasmids from clades that were not previously described were probably involved in these recombination events.