Fig. 1.

Schematic overview of the organization and sequence relatedness the RGP-specifying gene clusters of S. thermophilus strains (A–E), including five reference strains of S. thermophilus (*) for each respective RGP type. Regions of homology (% amino acid identity) are joined by blocks of different shades of grey to black as indicated in the figure. The proposed functions of the individual protein-encoding regions are colour coded and indicated within the figure. Scale bar was measured in base pair (bp). † indicates where representative examples of identical gene clusters are presented; the RGP-encoding operons of Moz111, Moz76, Brie16, FDL19 and Rico66 are identical to SMQ-301 and Moz83.