Fig. 2

Greater genetic diversity between than within Microcystis colonies. The number of single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) within and between Microcystis colonies of the same genotype are shown, compared with SNVs that accumulated over ~ 6 years of Microcystis culture in the laboratory (Methods). Large points show mean values. The data points represent the SNVs in a Microcystis genome within a colony (purple dots), SNVs between Microcystis genomes from the same genotypic clade (green dots), and SNVs between Microcystis genomes from the same Microcystis culture at two different time points (blue dots). Within colonies, the comparison was done by mapping the reads from a colony against its corresponding assembled Microcystis genome. Nucleotide sites that differed between some fraction of the reads and the assembled reference genome were considered as SNVs within a colony (the lowest allele frequency found within a colony was of 0.14%)