Fig. 3.

Superinfection immunity conferred by synthetic hybrid phages. (A) Sequence relationships of phages used to construct hybrid genomes. Colored circles represent the four wild-type phage genomes whose segments were rearranged for the assembly of synthetic hybrid genomes. Matrices show average pairwise nucleotide identities of whole genomes and average pairwise amino acid identities of their HVR1 and HVR2, with cells shaded according to % identity. Genome accession numbers are presented in Dataset S2. (B) Diagram of experimental protocol. Subdivided segments of the phage genome (labeled L, H, R, and P in outer black circle) and their constituent genes (inner circle) (I) are subcloned into plasmids (II) and assembled in vitro into hybrid phages and transformed into E. coli hosts (III). Primers used to amplify individual fragments are listed in Dataset S3. (C) Patterns of SiEx between hybrid phages. Matrix shows the ability of infecting phages, whose genome components for L-, H-, and R-segments (P-segments being uniform across phages) are color coded as in A and shown horizontally along the x-axis, to superinfect E. coli BW25113ΔfhuA containing different prophages, whose compositions are similarly color coded and shown vertically along the y-axis.