Rv0219 Still unknown · low

H37Rv Rv0219 · MTBC0 mtbc0_000233 · 182 aa · 262635–263183 MTBC0 (+) · RefSeq NP_214733.1

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Annotation: from legacy to revised

Legacy (H37Rv / Mycobrowser)transmembrane protein
MTBC0 PGAP re-annotationhypothetical protein
Revised (this work)Conserved hypothetical protein; no recognised domain. Function unknown.
Functional category (TubercuList)cell wall and cell processes

In the literature (TB corpus sweep) never studied

No TB publication mentions this locus tag in its title or abstract (sweep of a ~330k-abstract PubMed TB corpus). This gene is genuinely unstudied: its darkness reflects absence of investigation, not failure of investigation.

An antigen status or a virulence phenotype is NOT a molecular function: the verdict stays unchanged. This layer adds the missing context, it does not requalify the gene. This distinguishes a gene that is dark because nobody has looked from one that is dark despite having been studied. Source: PubMed (whole), MULTI-ALIAS sweep of title+abstract: the H37Rv locus tag AND every ortholog identifier (M. bovis Mb…, M. marinum MMAR_…, M. smegmatis MSMEG_…, M. leprae ML…, M. abscessus MAB_…), each hit VERIFIED against the abstract text (word-boundary regex). phase73, 2026-07-13.

Integrative functional lead (multi-layer synthesis, hypothesis)

candidate accessory membrane component (anchor/permease/transporter) of a lipid-remodelling/degradation module, to validate — NOT a lipid enzyme itself

Real-gene supportconserved (snp_sites=6/145209, intact ORF, pLDDT_AF 84), 4-TM polytopic membrane protein, MS-negative (expected)
Adversarial checkskeptic not refuted. operon Rv0218-Rv0222 = lipid metabolism (lipC/echA1) + kstR/whiB3 regulon = coherent context, BUT the only external STRING partner (aao/galE3 cooccurrence) does not converge on the lipid pathway (B2 fails); 4-TM fold is non-enzymatic.

Synthesised across all evidence layers (conservation, operon, STRING, regulon, phenotype, localisation, structure, vulnerability) under an anti-oversell decision checklist. A functional hypothesis to validate, not an established function. integrative multi-layer synthesis (P8), 2026-07-05.

Binding-pocket screen (P2Rank, geometric prediction) detector blind at this length

Pockets found0
Model length screened182 aa

Read with care. This protein (182 aa) is below the size where this detector has meaningful power: on proven enzymes, only 3.8% (1/26) under 200 aa reach the P2Rank confidence threshold, versus 60.5% (75/124) above it (P16.3b calibration, negative control EsxA/EsxB-scale panel). A negative or weak pocket result here should NOT be read as evidence against a ligand-binding role -- the test essentially has no power at this length, not that the protein lacks a site. P16.3e, calibration phase72b_pocket_calibration.py, 2026-08-03.

CRISPRi vulnerability

Vulnerability index 0.87 (95% CI -2.79 to 5.27). 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).

Orthologues (reciprocal best hits across mycobacteria)

M. bovis Mb0225 · 100.0% identity
M. marinum MMAR_0462 · 60.7% identity
M. orygis RJtmp_000234 · 100.0% 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 P96401 TrEMBL · unreviewed · Predicted
UniProt nameProbable conserved transmembrane protein

Functional vocabulary (eggNOG-mapper, orthology transfer)

Orthologous group2E339

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 0.756 · relaxed/neutral
Polymorphic sites (≥ 0.1% of strains) 2 synonymous, 4 missense, 0 nonsense, 0 frameshift

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) Actinomycetia

M. canettii dN/dS (deep-divergence selection) inf (low power) · 1 consensus substitution(s)
low power (1 canettii-consensus substitution(s)); present in M. canettii but dN/dS not reliable
Genus-wide presence (~53 non-MTBC Mycobacterium) present in 48/53 (91%) · mean identity 64.4% · 4/4 closest MTBAP relatives
conserved across the genus (present in 48/53 non-MTBC Mycobacterium genomes, incl. distant relatives) — an ancient core gene predating the genus radiation
Phylostratum (deepest detected homolog) MTBC-specific Mycobacterium Mycobacteriaceae Corynebacteriales Actinomycetia Bacteria
detected in 2/13 non-Mycobacterium reference genomes (down to Actinomycetia) · mean identity 51.0%
detected across the class Actinomycetia (beyond Corynebacteriales) but not outside the phylum — an Actinobacteria-level ancient gene

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) 12 in the ORF — 0 in the essential state, 0 growth-defect, 12 non-essential, 0 growth-advantage. Saturation 1.000, mean read count 71.6666666667. 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.

Predicted localisation (DeepTMHMM + lipobox)

Predictionpredicted membrane protein (4 TM helixes)
DeepTMHMM classTM
TM helices (DeepTMHMM)4

Transmembrane topology and signal peptide from DeepTMHMM (deep-learning reference predictor); lipoproteins from a (myco)bacterial lipobox motif. A sequence-based prediction of subcellular context.

Physico-chemical properties (computed, ProtParam)

Length182 aa
Molecular weight20.1 kDa
Theoretical pI10.58
GRAVY0.405 (hydrophobic)
Aliphatic index117.0
Aromaticity0.104
Instability index50.9 (unstable)

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)

No Pfam-A domain above the gathering threshold (or not yet scanned).

Genomic context (neighbours & predicted operon) operon of 5

Upstream (5' on genome)Rv0218 (+ strand, 1 bp gap)
Downstream (3' on genome)lipC (+ strand, 9 bp gap)
Predicted operon Rv0218 · Rv0219 · lipC · Rv0221 · echA1

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).

Transcriptional regulation (signed TRN: ChIP-seq + TFOE)

Regulated by (4 TF) whiB5 (represses) · mmpR5 (activates) · whiB3 (activates) · kstR (activates)

Regulatory edges from the ISB signed transcriptional regulatory network (TF ChIP-seq binding, Minch 2015 + TF-overexpression response, Rustad 2014). An edge is regulatory evidence (binding and/or expression change), not necessarily direct. For a "hypothetical", membership in a known regulon (e.g. DosR dormancy, PhoP virulence) is a strong physiological-context lead.

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: Rv0218 (transmembrane protein), high confidence from genomic context alone (score 972 excluding text-mining).

PartnerProductScoreNo text-miningChannels (≥400)
Rv0218 transmembrane protein 972 972 ctx neighborhood:881 cooccurence:771
Rv0220 lipC esterase LipC 796 796 ctx neighborhood:796
Rv0541c integral membrane protein 761 761 ctx cooccurence:720
Rv0222 echA1 enoyl-CoA hydratase EchA1 759 759 ctx neighborhood:759
Rv0540 hyp hypothetical protein 684 684 ctx cooccurence:637
Rv1126c hyp hypothetical protein 683 683 ctx cooccurence:682
Rv1868 hyp hypothetical protein 673 673 ctx cooccurence:670
Rv1006 hyp hypothetical protein 663 663 ctx cooccurence:663
Rv0221 diacyglycerol O-acyltransferase 634 634 ctx neighborhood:634
Rv1905c aao D-amino acid oxidase 623 623 ctx cooccurence:623
Rv1435c hyp hypothetical protein 611 611 ctx cooccurence:611
Rv0536 galE3 UDP-glucose 4-epimerase GalE 604 605 ctx cooccurence:559
Rv0217c lipW esterase LipW 602 602 ctx neighborhood:600
Rv2047c hyp hypothetical protein 586 587 ctx cooccurence:584
Rv1748 hyp hypothetical protein 579 580 ctx cooccurence:576

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

  • Legacy H37Rv annotation: transmembrane protein
  • MTBC0 PGAP product: hypothetical protein
  • (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 NP_214733.1)
  • Domains: Pfam-A via hmmscan --cut_ga — none above threshold
  • 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 2E339
  • Curated reference: UniProt P96401 (TrEMBL, unreviewed; Predicted)
  • 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 84.2)
  • Interaction network: STRING v12.0 (Szklarczyk et al. 2023, doi:10.1093/nar/gkac1000), taxon 83332, CC-BY 4.0 — 29 functional partner(s); context anchor Rv0218
  • 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)
  • Transcriptional regulation: ISB signed TRN — TF ChIP-seq (Minch et al. 2015, doi:10.1038/ncomms6829) + TF overexpression (Rustad et al. 2014, doi:10.1186/gb-2014-15-11-502)
  • Physico-chemical properties: ExPASy ProtParam method via Biopython (Gasteiger et al. 2005), computed from the MTBC0 sequence
  • Predicted localisation: DeepTMHMM (Hallgren et al. 2022, doi:10.1101/2022.04.08.487609) for transmembrane topology and signal peptide
  • Primary literature: none located yet; annotation rests on the domain/homology sources above.

Ancestral MTBC0 protein sequence

>mtbc0_000233|Rv0219|
MFDIATRFKNSYGSGPLHLLAMVSGFALLGYIVATARPSALWNQATWWQSIAVWFVAAVVAHDLLLYPLYALADRILARLVGRRDVSAPRRRPELPVRNYIRIPALAAGLTLLVFLPGIIRQGAPTYLDATGQTQEPFLGRWLLLTAVAFGISAAAYAIRLVVAHVRRRRAGCSRVDAIDEE