Figure 2

Sequence alignment shows evidence for a "heterocycloanthracin" group of bacteriocin precursors. This shows an alignment of protoxin sequences. Insertions and deletions of the form Cys-Xaa-Xaa, and Cys-Gly-Gly in particular, account for many of the differences between non-identical sequence pairs. Shown are Bacillus anthracis protein BA_2677 (RF|YP_019318.1), twenty-two non-identical close homologs from other Bacillus strains, and the more distantly related protoxin from B. licheniformis. The Arg-Arg pair represents the boundary between the N-terminal (leader peptide) and C-terminal (Cys-rich) regions. At least one heterocycloanthracin is found in every completed genome studied from B. anthracis, B. cereus, B. thuringiensis, and B. weihenstephanensis. Strains of origin are B. anthracis Ames (sequence 1), B. cereus E33l (2), B. c. H3081.97 (3), B. thuringiensis sv. konkukian str. 97–27 (4), B. c. ATCC 14579 (5, 18), B. weihenstephanensis KBAB4 (6,15), B. c. NVH0597-99 (7), B. c. AH187 (8, 23), B. t. sv. israelensis ATCC 35646 (9, 20), B. c. G9842 (10, 22), B. c. G9241 (11, 21), B. c. ATCC 10987 (12, 17), B. c. B4264 (13, 19), B. c. subsp. cytotoxis NVH 391-98 (14), B. c. AH1134 (16), and B. licheniformis ATCC 14580 (24).