Domain organization of S. pyogenes AspA and sequence alignment of the C2–3 domains of AspA, SpaP and SspB. (A) The primary sequence of AspA begins with a signal peptide (SP), followed in sequence by a small N-terminal domain (N), an alanine rich repeat region (A), a variable domain (V), a proline rich repeat region (P), a C-terminal region (C), and finally a cell wall anchor segment (CW) containing an LPxTG-motif for sortase mediated cell wall attachment. (B) Sequence alignment of the AspA (Uniprot id. Q48S75), SpaP (P23404) and SspB (P16952) C2–3 domains. Secondary structure elements from the structure of AspA-C2–3 are marked above the alignment.