Fig. 3

Comparison of the peak expression times of early, middle, and late genes in cyanomyovirus field populations. As shown in Fig. 2, the periodically expressed cyanomyovirus genes are classified as early (3 genes), middle (11 genes), and late genes (7 genes) according to the temporal expression patterns of their orthologs in cultured cyanophages. The peak expression times of early, middle, and late genes in cyanomyovirus field populations are shown in box and whisker plots. The bottom and top of a box indicate the first and third quartiles, respectively. The band inside a box indicates the median and the ends of a whisker represent the upper and lower extremes. Black dots indicate the estimated peak expression times of cyanomyovirus genes. The peak expression times of early, middle, and late genes are compared using the two-tailed Student’s test and the p values are indicated on top of the plots (*indicates p < 0.05 and ns indicates no significance)