Comparison of sequence diversity between H-NS-bound and -unbound intergenic regions located upstream or downstream of genes.

<p>The diversity of each conserved intergenic region cluster was computed by averaging all pairwise evolutionary distances of the conserved intergenic regions in <i>E</i>. <i>coli</i> strains. Box plots are shown in the same manner as in <a href="http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1005796#pgen.1005796.g002" target="_blank">Fig 2</a>: red, H-NS-bound intergenic regions; gray, H-NS-unbound intergenic regions. (A) Distribution of sequence diversity in the H-NS-bound (red; N = 94, median value = 0.016) and -unbound (gray; N = 609, median value = 0.0067) conserved intergenic regions. (B) Schematic view and definitions of the classes and subclasses of conserved intergenic regions. (C) Sequence diversity of class I (N = 92, median value = 0.018) and class II (N = 611, median value = 0.0061) intergenic regions. (D) Sequence diversity of H-NS-bound (N = 14, median value = 0.015) and -unbound (N = 78, median value = 0.019) class I intergenic regions (left) and of H-NS-bound (N = 80, median value = 0.017) and -unbound (N = 531, median value = 0.0052) class II intergenic regions (right). (E) Sequence diversity of H-NS-bound (N = 24, median value = 0.022) and—unbound (N = 16, median value = 0.012) class II HTG-intergenic regions (left); H-NS-bound (N = 28, median value = 0.017) and -unbound (N = 411, median value = 0.0047) class II Core-intergenic regions (right). The asterisks indicate the statistical significance of the difference between the sequence diversity in the H-NS-bound and -unbound intergenic regions as assessed with the Wilcoxon rank-sum test (**<i>p</i> < 0.001, *<i>p</i> < 0.05, ns: not significant).