Base composition and maximum length of the complementary sequences in ES3 and ES6 from different taxa. Sequence information for >2900 discrete species was taken from the European Small Subunit Ribosomal Database (http://rrna.uia.ac.be/ssu/index.html; Wuyts et al. 2002). (ES 3, ES 6) The relative abundance (%) of each of the four bases at the nine positions in the two putative complementary sequences (ES3 and ES6). (Base pairs) The maximum possible number of continuous base pairs formed by the complementary sequences in ES3 and ES6. The bars represent the percentage of species within each group that could form a complementary helix of indicated length. The number of species in each taxon or group of organisms within a taxon is given in parentheses. The taxa listed correspond to the taxonomy usage given by the National Institute for Biotechnology Information (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/taxonomyhome.html).
