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Genome replication is a fundamental requirement for the proliferation of all cells. Throughout the domains of life, conserved DNA replication initiation proteins assemble at specific chromosomal loci termed replication origins and direct loading of replicative helicases . Despite decades of study on bacterial replication, the diversity of bacterial chromosome origin architecture has confounded the search for molecular mechanisms directing the initiation process. Recently a basal system for opening a bacterial chromosome origin (oriC) was proposed . In the model organism Bacillus subtilis, a pair of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) binding sites (DnaA‐boxes) guide the replication initiator DnaA onto adjacent single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) binding motifs (DnaA‐trios) where the protein assembles into an oligomer that stretches DNA to promote origin unwinding. We report here that these core elements are predicted to …