Figure 4

Genomic organization of tar genes in S. aureus. Genomic organization of tar/tag genes W23, 168, S. aureus strains COL, Mu50 are shown here. The other 4 strains are not shown here since they have similar genomic organization (See Additional file 4 for complete figure). The top line of this figure shows the divergon organizations of B. subtilis W23 and 168 as a reference. The following two lines represented in arrows are graphic demonstration of genomic organization of the selected two S. aureus strains. Arrows in different colours represent different genes as illustrated by the colour table at the bottom. The length of each arrow is defined accurately by the scale, demonstrating the exact amino acid length of each gene. All six S. aureus strains share a similar genomic organization, which is quite different from B. subtilis W23 and 168 counterparts. GenBank gi numbers are indicated.