TABLE 3.

List of regulatory regions putatively involved in promoting competing abilities^a

COG ID	COG class	COG functional category	Prokka annotation/product	Biological process(es)
COG2308	S	Uncharacterized conserved protein, circularly permuted ATP-grasp superfamily	Uncharacterized putative protein	Function unknown
COG2188	K	DNA-binding transcriptional regulator, GntR family	Putative transcriptional repressor	DNA-binding transcriptional regulation
COG0583	K	DNA-binding transcriptional regulator, LysR family	HTH-type transcriptional regulator DmlR	Transcriptional regulator of dmlA (aerobic growth on d-malate as the sole carbon source)
COG1529	C	CO or xanthine dehydrogenase, Mo-binding subunit	Putative caffeine dehydrogenase subunit alpha	Oxidation-reduction process

^aCOG description of supposed target orthologous genes of regulatory region hits identified by 10 k-mers (P value 1.13 × 10⁻⁴) in the most competitive strains (Sinorhizobium meliloti GR4, KH35c, KH46, SM11).