FIG 7.

Conserved gene synteny in the neighborhood of putative abcA, abcD, bzlA, and ubiX genes (the gene synteny shown here was reported by Abu Laban et al. [22]). Primers were designed to target the intragenic regions to determine whether the operonic structure previously proposed was also observed in this study (primer sequences are included in Table S1 in the supplemental material). The PCR products were sequenced in both forward and reverse directions. Primers were designed such that each amplified region has at minimum a 70-bp overlap with the targeted flanking genes. The relevant pyrosequencing reads and Illumina contigs are also mapped to the predicted operon. The visible overlaps between Illumina contigs were all shorter than 70 bp, and thus, these contigs were not assembled.