PE_PGRS1 Family assigned · medium auto-curated

H37Rv Rv0109 · MTBC0 - · 496 aa · 131382–132872 H37Rv (+) · RefSeq YP_177692.1

Genomic neighbourhood (genome browser)

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Annotation: from legacy to revised

Legacy (H37Rv / Mycobrowser)PE-PGRS family protein PE_PGRS1
MTBC0 PGAP re-annotation
Revised (this work)PE-PGRS family protein PE_PGRS1. Pfam: PE (PF00934.26), PGRS (PF21526.3).
Functional category (TubercuList)PE/PPE

Auto-curated: this verdict and function were generated by rules from PGAP + Pfam + Foldseek and have not been hand-reviewed.

Annotated on the H37Rv protein: this gene has no 1:1 ancestral MTBC0 anchor (PE/PPE, paralogue, IS element, or otherwise unanchored CDS).

In the literature (TB corpus sweep) 3 publications

3 TB publications mention this gene. 3 publication(s) discuss this gene (3 in a M. tuberculosis context).

PublicationDate
Late stage specific Rv0109 (PE_PGRS1) protein of Mycobacterium tuberculosis induces mitochondria mediated macrophage apoptosis. doi:10.1016/j.micpath.2023.106021 2023
Mycobacterium tuberculosis PE_PGRS1 promotes mycobacteria intracellular survival via reducing the concentration of intracellular free Ca2+ and suppressing endoplasmic reticulum stress. doi:10.1016/j.molimm.2022.12.007 2023
Bioinformatic identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis proteins likely to target host cell mitochondria: virulence factors? doi:10.1186/2042-5783-2-9 2012

This layer CITES the literature and adds context; it does not change the verdict or the function stated elsewhere in this fiche. This distinguishes a gene that is dark because nobody has looked from one that is dark despite having been studied. Source: PubMed (whole): H37Rv locus tag + GENE NAME + ortholog identifiers (Mb…, MMAR_…, MSMEG_…, ML…, MAB_…), under a mycobacterial context filter; hits verified against the abstract text. Species-context counts distinguish M. tuberculosis literature from literature on other mycobacteria. phase76/phase77, 2026-07-13.

Intrinsic disorder (sequence + structure) highly disordered

Predicted disorder50% of residues (metapredict) · mean AlphaFold pLDDT 95.7
Disordered regions3 IDR(s), longest 189 aa [0-37, 154-228, 307-496]

sequence-based disorder is high but AlphaFold folds it confidently (pLDDT>=70): treat the disorder call with caution (possible metapredict over-call)

A property (biophysics), not a function. No LLPS/condensate claim is made from disorder alone. Verdict unchanged. Source: metapredict v3 (Emenecker/Holehouse) per-residue disorder + AlphaFold mean pLDDT (annotation_mtbc P16.13).

CRISPRi vulnerability

Vulnerability index -0.01 (95% CI -6.49 to 7.66). A more negative index = more vulnerable to knockdown (better drug-target quality); indicative threshold VI ≤ -6 = highly vulnerable.

Quantitative CRISPRi knockdown, graded (finer than binary Tn-seq essentiality). Source: CRISPRi vulnerability index (Bosch 2021, pebble.rockefeller.edu).

Legacy record & comparison (Mycobrowser)

Mycobrowser functionFunction unknown

The legacy Mycobrowser record is shown for verification. Mycobrowser is no longer maintained; its EC numbers predate recent nomenclature revisions, so a class change usually reflects re-numbering, not a conflict.

Orthologues (reciprocal best hits across mycobacteria)

M. bovis Mb0113 · 100.0% identity
M. marinum MMAR_0299 · 70.5% identity

Reciprocal-best-hit orthologues (DIAMOND) against the Mycobrowser reference proteomes. A missing species is informative: e.g. a gene absent from M. leprae was likely lost in its reductive genome evolution. Locus tags link to Mycobrowser.

Curated reference (UniProt)

UniProt L0T2H7 SwissProt · reviewed · Evidence at transcript level
UniProt namePE-PGRS family protein PE_PGRS1
Curated functionWhen expressed in host mitochondria, induces mitochondrial stress which results in mitochondrial membrane depolarization, up-regulation of mitochondrial superoxides and release of cytochrome-C in the cytoplasm. The cytochrome-C in cytoplasm triggers the activation of caspase-9, caspase-3 and caspase-7, leading to the apoptosis of host macrophages. Being a late expressing protein, apoptosis induction by PE_PGRS1 may facilitate the M.tuberculosis survival and silent expansion of its niche at the site of granuloma..; FUNCTION: When expressed in THP-1 macrophages, promotes the survival of mycobact.

Functional vocabulary (eggNOG-mapper, orthology transfer)

COG category I Lipid transport and metabolism
eggNOG descriptionPE family
Orthologous groupCOG0657

Orthology-based transfer (eggNOG 5.0.2, diamond). EC/KO/GO/CAZy are computed annotations, not manual curation; cross-check against the primary literature before treating a specific reaction as established.

Conservation & selection (intra-MTBC, 145 209 strains)

pN/pS 2.379 · diversifying/relaxed
Polymorphic sites (≥ 0.1% of strains) 1 synonymous, 6 missense, 0 nonsense, 1 frameshift
Disruption 1 distinct premature-stop/frameshift site(s); most common in 0.13% of strains (195) · clonal

pN/pS from segregating SNPs (singletons removed) normalised by possible sites. Low pN/pS = purifying selection (a strong signal that a "hypothetical" is a real, constrained gene). A high pN/pS is ambiguous: relaxed constraint or positive selection (drug resistance, antigenic variation) inflate it; e.g. rpoB/katG/pncA score high here for resistance, not loss of function. A clonal disruption (one allele over a clade) suggests lineage pseudogenisation; a convergent one (many independent alleles) is typical of resistance loss-of-function.

Outgroup conservation (beyond the MTBC) MTBC-specific

M. canettii dN/dS (deep-divergence selection) 0.199 (low power) · 3 consensus substitution(s)
low power (3 canettii-consensus substitution(s)); present in M. canettii but dN/dS not reliable
Genus-wide presence (~53 non-MTBC Mycobacterium) present in 0/53 (0%) · 0/4 closest MTBAP relatives
NOT MTBC-specific despite passing the strict presence filter: no hit at pident>=30 & qcov>=50 across the 53 non-MTBC genomes, BUT sub-threshold tblastn hit(s) exist (M_intracellulare:74.1id/11cov;n=50;mtbap=4) — the gene is PRESENT BUT DIVERGENT in at least one non-MTBC Mycobacterium, not a genus-level innovation. Do not frame as MTBC-specific nor as a host-adaptation factor. Human non-homology, if needed, must be established directly (BLASTp vs human proteome), never inferred from this field.
Phylostratum (deepest detected homolog) MTBC-specific Mycobacterium Mycobacteriaceae Corynebacteriales Actinomycetia Bacteria

absent from the whole genus and from all outgroups tested — a candidate MTBC-specific innovation (confirm by synteny; rule out detection failure for short/divergent ORFs)

Two orthogonal outgroup signals. M. canettii (the immediate outgroup) gives a deep-divergence dN/dS (a low value confirms a constrained, real gene; shown as confident only at ≥8 substitutions, else flagged low-power). Genus-wide presence/absence (tblastn vs assembled non-MTBC genomes) places the gene on the ancient-core ↔ MTBC-specific axis: a gene absent even from the closest MTBAP relatives is a candidate MTBC-specific innovation (possible host-adaptation factor, to confirm by synteny). The phylostratum extends that axis outside the genus (tblastn vs 13 reference genomes spanning Mycobacteriaceae → Corynebacteriales → Actinomycetia → outside the phylum): it is the deepest clade in which a homolog is still detected, i.e. a proxy for gene age. Read it with the null model in mind: a shallow (young) stratum can also reflect homology-detection failure for short or fast-evolving ORFs, so it is a descriptive axis, not a proof of novelty.

Essentiality (transposon mutagenesis)

DeJesus 2017 callNE · non-essential
What the call meansnon-essential
TA sites (Himar1) 28 in the ORF — 0 in the essential state, 0 growth-defect, 28 non-essential, 0 growth-advantage. Saturation 0.786, mean read count 68.0909090909. A region of the protein devoid of TA sites is invisible to this assay: nothing can be inferred about it, in either direction.

Genome-wide Himar1 transposon essentiality in H37Rv (DeJesus 2017). An essential call (ES/ESD/GD) is strong, independent evidence that a "hypothetical" locus encodes a functional, selectively required gene — orthogonal to intra-species conservation.

Proteomics (mass spectrometry) not detected

Not detected in the mass-spectrometry datasets integrated by PaxDb. This is not evidence of absence: low-abundance, condition-specific, or MS-refractory proteins (e.g. small, highly hydrophobic, or repetitive PE/PPE families with few tryptic peptides) are systematically under-sampled.

Physico-chemical properties (computed, ProtParam)

Length496 aa
Molecular weight42.3 kDa
Theoretical pI4.11
GRAVY0.161 (hydrophobic)
Aliphatic index64.7
Aromaticity0.04
Instability index16.7 (stable)

Computed from the ancestral MTBC0 sequence with the ExPASy ProtParam method (Biopython). Descriptive biophysical context: a positive GRAVY flags a hydrophobic (often membrane) protein, a high instability index (>40) predicts a short in-vitro half-life, an extreme pI hints at compartment or binding partner.

Domains (Pfam, hmmscan --cut_ga)

PfamAccessioni-EvalueResiduesDescription
PEPF00934.26 1.8e-314–94 PE family
PGRSPF21526.3 8.2e-10125–192 PGRS repeats

Structural search (AlphaFold DB model, Foldseek vs PDB — genome-wide) pLDDT 95.7

PDB hitprobTM-scoreE-valueDescription
5xfs-assembly1_A 1.00 0.98 1.7e-06 sig 5xfs-assembly1_A Crystal structure of PE8-PPE15 in complex with EspG5 from M. tuberculosis
4w4k-assembly2_C 1.00 0.93 9.2e-04 sig 4w4k-assembly2_C Crystal structure of a PE25-PPE41 heterodimer from a type VII secretion system of M. tuberculosis
4w4k-assembly1_A 1.00 0.91 1.4e-03 sig 4w4k-assembly1_A Crystal structure of a PE25-PPE41 heterodimer from a type VII secretion system of M. tuberculosis
2g38-assembly2_C 1.00 0.91 3.1e-03 sig 2g38-assembly2_C A PE/PPE Protein Complex from Mycobacterium tuberculosis
7jjv-assembly1_A 0.87 0.33 3.1e-07 sig 7jjv-assembly1_A Crystal waters on the nine polyproline type II helical bundle springtail antifreeze protein from Granisotoma rainieri match the ice lattice

Foldseek search of the AlphaFold DB model (mean pLDDT 95.7, gated at 70) against the PDB — a genome-wide extension of the ESMFold dark-gene search that also covers proteins beyond the single-sequence length limit. Confident structural neighbours (E < 0.01) shown.

Genomic context (neighbours & predicted operon)

Upstream (5' on genome)Rv0108c (- strand, 277 bp gap)
Downstream (3' on genome)Rv0110 (+ strand, 147 bp gap)

Neighbours from the H37Rv annotation (+ strand). The operon is predicted by co-directional intergenic distance (same strand, gaps ≤50 bp) — a transcription-unit hypothesis, not a mapped TSS. For a "hypothetical", co-transcription with a characterised operon is a concrete functional lead (complements the STRING neighborhood channel below).

Functional interaction network (STRING v12, guilt-by-association)

Explore full network →

Node colour = verdict, dashed = hypothetical; edge colour = evidence (green experimental, orange genomic-context, grey co-expression), width ∝ score. Click a partner to open its page; "Explore full network" to walk the graph.

Closest characterised functional partner: Rv0110 (integral membrane protein), medium confidence from genomic context alone (score 505 excluding text-mining).

PartnerProductScoreNo text-miningChannels (≥400)
Rv0110 integral membrane protein 506 505 ctx neighborhood:505
Rv0108c hyp hypothetical protein 445 446 ctx neighborhood:446
Rv0198c zmp1 zinc metalloprotease 407 407
Rv0102 integral membrane protein 804 49 textmining:803
Rv0096 PPE1 PPE family protein PPE1 803 41 textmining:803
Rv0101 nrp peptide synthetase Nrp 680 41 textmining:680
Rv0097 oxidoreductase 651 41 textmining:651
Rv0100 hyp hypothetical protein 514 41 textmining:514
Rv0098 fcoT fatty acyl CoA thioesterase FcoT 435 41 textmining:435
Rv0052 hyp hypothetical protein 424 41 textmining:424

STRING combines evidence channels (neighborhood, fusion, cooccurrence, coexpression, experimental, database, text-mining) into a 0–1000 score. The ctx badge marks edges carried by the genomic-context channels (conserved neighborhood, fusion, phylogenetic co-occurrence), which are independent of orthology and structure and the strongest signal for an unknown gene. The exp badge marks an experimentally-supported partner (measured interaction, experimental/database channel ≥400) as opposed to a purely predicted one — but note that the M. tuberculosis experimental interactome is dominated by a noisy bacterial-two-hybrid screen, so a strong measured link that contradicts the operon/localisation context is likely a false positive. The no text-mining column recomputes the score from data alone, so a link that does not depend on the literature is visible. Association is a function hypothesis, not proof: corroborate with the operon context and the primary literature before assigning a function.

Evidence

  • Annotation from H37Rv (no MTBC0 1:1 anchor; H37Rv protein used): PE-PGRS family protein PE_PGRS1
  • Pfam (hmmscan --cut_ga): PE PF00934.26 (E=2e-31), PGRS PF21526.3 (E=8e-10)
  • (auto-curated by rules from PGAP + Pfam + Foldseek; not hand-reviewed)

Sources

  • Ancestral sequence & coordinates: Harrison LB et al. (2024), An imputed ancestral reference genome for the MTBC, doi:10.1101/2023.09.07.556366
  • Product annotation: NCBI PGAP on MTBC0; legacy from H37Rv NC_000962.3 (RefSeq YP_177692.1)
  • Domains: Pfam-A via hmmscan --cut_ga — PE (PF00934.26), PGRS (PF21526.3)
  • Sequence-level signal: ESM Atlas (EvolutionaryScale × BioHub) — exploratory
  • Controlled vocabulary: eggNOG-mapper 2.1.12 (Cantalapiedra et al. 2021, doi:10.1093/molbev/msab293), eggNOG 5.0 DB (Huerta-Cepas et al. 2019) — OG COG0657
  • Curated reference: UniProt L0T2H7 (SwissProt, reviewed; Evidence at transcript level)
  • Intra-MTBC selection: pN/pS and disruption from SPDI variants of 145 209 MTBC strains (this work, local collection vs H37Rv NC_000962.3)
  • Genome-wide structure: AlphaFold DB model (Jumper et al. 2021, doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2; Varadi et al. 2024, doi:10.1093/nar/gkad1011) searched vs PDB with Foldseek (mean pLDDT 95.7)
  • Interaction network: STRING v12.0 (Szklarczyk et al. 2023, doi:10.1093/nar/gkac1000), taxon 83332, CC-BY 4.0 — 10 functional partner(s); context anchor Rv0110
  • Essentiality: genome-wide transposon mutagenesis in H37Rv — DeJesus et al. 2017 (mBio, doi:10.1128/mBio.02133-16, CC BY)
  • Functional category: TubercuList scheme (Cole et al. 1998, doi:10.1038/31159), via Mycobrowser (Kapopoulou et al. 2011, doi:10.1016/j.tube.2010.09.006)
  • Orthologues: reciprocal best hits (DIAMOND, Buchfink et al. 2021, doi:10.1038/s41592-021-01101-x) against Mycobrowser release 5 reference proteomes
  • Genomic context / operon: H37Rv annotation; operon predicted by co-directional intergenic distance (Salgado et al. 2000, doi:10.1073/pnas.030539397)
  • Physico-chemical properties: ExPASy ProtParam method via Biopython (Gasteiger et al. 2005), computed from the MTBC0 sequence
  • Primary literature: none located yet; annotation rests on the domain/homology sources above.

Ancestral MTBC0 protein sequence

>H37Rv|Rv0109|PE_PGRS1
MSLLITSPATVAAAATHLAGIGSALSTANAAAAAPTTALSVAGADEVSVLIAALFEAYAQEYQALSAQALAFHDQFVQALNMGAVCYAAAETANATPLQALQTVQQNVLTVVNAPTQALLGRPIIGNGANGLPNTGQDGGPGGLLFGNGGNGGSGGVDQAGGNGGAAGLIGNGGSGGVGGPGIAGSAGGAGGAGGLLFGNGGPGGAGGIGTTGDGGPGGAGGNAIGLFGSGGTGGMGGVGGMGGVGNGGNAGNGGTAGLFGHGGAGGAGGIGSADGGLGGGGGNGRFMGNGGVGGAGGYGASGDGGNAGNGGLGGVFGDGGAGGTGGLGDVNGGLAGIGGNAGFVRNGGAGGNGQLGSGAVSSAGGMGGNGGLVFGNGGPGGLGGPGTSAGNGGMGGNAVGLFGQGGAGGAGGSGFGAGIPGGRGGDGGSGGLIGDGGTGGGAGAGDAAASAGGNGGNARLIGNGGDGGPGMFGGPGGAGGSGGTIFGFAGTPGPS