Table 1.
Clinical characteristics of the study participants.
Fig 1.
A sum of distinct nucleotide sequences within each V region of tprK from each strain in the samples at different stages.
The data of tprK from primary syphilis samples were obtained in previous studies [17].
Fig 2.
Proportional distribution of the captured distinct nucleotide sequences within each V region of tprK from each strain.
Each circle presents the relative frequency of a distinct sequence within the V region in each strain. The solid and hollow circles indicate the predominant sequences and the minor variants in the populations, respectively. The two colors specify the strains from the samples at the two different stages.
Fig 3.
Proportional distribution of minor variants in three frequency ranges (1–5%, 5–10% and 10–49.9%).
N represents the total amount of minor variants detected in the primary and secondary syphilis samples. The proportional distributed in the three frequency ranges indicated the number of variants within each range relative to the total amount of minor variants.
Table 2.
Interstrain redundancy in amino acid sequences within seven V regions of the tprK gene in the primary and secondary samples.
Fig 4.
Overlapping amino acid sequences within the V region between the samples at the two different stages.
(A) Each Venn diagram presents the overlapping amino acid sequences in the V regions of tprK in primary and secondary syphilis patients. The numbers in the red and green circles represent the total number of amino acid variants that are unique to primary and secondary syphilis patients, respectively. The number in the intersection of the two circles represents the number of overlapping variants. (B) The figure shows the overlapping predominant sequences within the V regions and the redundancy of these sequences in primary and secondary syphilis samples.