Figure 6

Plasmid-hosts comparisons based on the tetranucleotide ZOM measure. Plasmids sized 10 kbp and larger were compared with their corresponding archaeal and bacterial hosts. Plasmid-host correlation values (black dots) were then compared with host average autocorrelation values (expected plasmid-host correlation score, red line) based on 40 kbp sliding windows and tetranucleotide ZOMs. The green line represents lower autocorrelation values, i.e. average autocorrelation values subtracted by standard deviation, while the blue and cyan lines show host and plasmid GC content respectively. The vertical axis represents host bacteria average autocorrelation values (red line), host GC content (blue line), plasmid GC content (cyan), and plasmid-host correlations (black dots). All bacteria and archaea with corresponding plasmids are distributed as points along the horizontal axis and sorted by increasing plasmid GC content from left to right. From the graph it can be observed that GC rich bacteria were more similar to their plasmids in terms of tetranucleotide ZOMs than AT rich bacteria. It can also be noticed that average autocorrelation scores (expected plasmid-host correlation scores) seems to increase and become less volatile for GC rich bacteria than their AT rich counterparts.