Fig. 6: The horizontally transferred dnd gene cluster substantially reduces the fitness of the deep-sea bacterium S. piezotolerans WP3.

a Experimental scheme of competition experiments performed. Co-culture competition assays were performed in 2216E media at 28 °C and 20 °C. The details can be found in the Methods section. b Fitness measurements of two WP3 strains (WP3NR/DndΔE vs. WP3NR/Dnd) at different temperatures. The red line indicates a relative fitness of 1 (no fitness difference). Data are represented as mean ± s.d. and based on three biologically independent samples. c Detection of PT sites by SMRT sequencing across the genome of S. piezotolerans WP3NR/Dnd. The annotations from the inner to outer circles are indicated below the diagram. d Comparison of gene expression profiles in WP3NR/Dnd relative to WP3NR/DndΔE. The RNA-seq data represent three biologically independent samples for each strain, and the data were hierarchically clustered. Normalized differential expression is shown in the heat map according to the scale bar (log₂ scale) from most upregulated (red) to most downregulated (blue). The DEGs involved in metabolic function are indicated in red in the right panel. e Distribution of PT sites within the DEGs. The genomic PT profile and transcriptome data were combined to reveal the relationship between them. Boxplot components: center line, median; box limits, upper and lower quartiles; whiskers, 1.5× interquartile range. The significance was analyzed by two-sided unpaired Student’s t test (ns, not significant, P = 0.3292). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.