Figure 5.

ΔG° values in the translation initiation region for the C. tetani E88 genes. For all the C. tetani E88 genes we calculated the average of ΔG° values in the translation initiation region for each relative spacing position (A). A dramatic drop in the ΔG° values from 5 to 11 nucleotides before the start codon indicates presence of SD sequence. The sudden drop in the ΔG° value immediately after the first base in the start codon may indicate potentially wrong SD predictions, while the sudden drop at, for instance, 7 bps may indicate downstream start codon reflections. A drop in the ΔG° values at 6 bps to the start codon of the CTC00136 gene indicates that it is a gene with an upstream SD sequence (B). The gene CTC00983 shows three drops in ΔG° value (C). The drop at 6 bps to the start codon falls within the optimal distance between the SD sequence and the start codon (from 5 to 11 bps), while the drop at 3 bps falls out of this optimal distance. Looking downstream of the start codon the drop in ΔG° value falls at 7 bps after the first base of the start codon, which may mean that there is a start codon reflecting a SD sequence around this position. A dramatic drop in ΔG° value is observed 1 bps after the first base of the GTG start codon of the gene CTC00194 (D). This drop is indicating a mispredicted start codon (GTG underlined in the sequence) and as it can be observed in the downstream sequence, which is denoted below the graph, this gene has an alternative start codon (ATG underlined in the sequence) only 4 codons downstream of the mispredicted one.