napA Resolved · high

H37Rv Rv0430 · MTBC0 mtbc0_000452 · 102 aa · 522098–522406 (+) · RefSeq NP_214944.1

Annotation: from legacy to revised

Legacy (H37Rv / Mycobrowser)hypothetical protein
MTBC0 PGAP re-annotationDUF3263 domain-containing protein
Revised (this work)NapA, a nucleoid-associated protein (NAP) and DNA topology modulator. RefSeq leaves this locus 'hypothetical protein'. Rv0430 binds DNA in a length- and supercoil-dependent manner, prefers A/T-rich sequences, bridges distant DNA segments, coats DNA into inflexible rods, protects DNA from damaging agents, modulates supercoiling and stimulates the DNA-relaxation activity of topoisomerase I. It is the first gene of an operon harbouring the virulence regulators virR and sodC, controls their expression and stimulates its own promoter in a supercoiling-dependent manner, making it a supercoiling-responsive virulence regulator (Datta 2019). Experimentally characterised.

Curated reference (UniProt)

UniProt P96276 TrEMBL · unreviewed · Evidence at protein level
UniProt nameDUF3263 domain-containing protein

Functional vocabulary (eggNOG-mapper, orthology transfer)

COG category S Function unknown
eggNOG descriptionProtein of unknown function (DUF3263)
Orthologous group2CUM0

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 0.113 · strong purifying
Polymorphic sites (≥ 0.1% of strains) 3 synonymous, 1 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.

Domains (Pfam, hmmscan --cut_ga)

PfamAccessioni-EvalueResiduesDescription
DUF3263PF11662.14 8.5e-3721–92 Protein of unknown function (DUF3263)

Structural neighbours (Foldseek on the ESMFold model, exploratory)

ESMFold model confidence: mean pLDDT 63.1 (low). Low-confidence model: the fold may be unreliable, so treat these structural hits with caution.

Best matches against the PDB, ranked by Foldseek homology probability. A high probability / TM-score suggests a shared fold; unless flagged sig (E < 0.01) these are fold hypotheses, not assignments.

TargetProbTME-valueDescription
8cyf-assembly1_B 0.47 0.54 6.8e-01 8cyf-assembly1_B WhiB3 bound to SigmaAr4-RNAP Beta flap tip chimera and DNA
8d5v-assembly2_D 0.47 0.64 1.3e+00 8d5v-assembly2_D WhiB6 bound to the SigmaAr4-RNAP Beta flap tip chimera
7kug-assembly1_B 0.41 0.63 1.4e+00 7kug-assembly1_B Fe-S cluster-bound transcription activator WhiB7 in complex with the SigmaAr4-RNAP Beta flap tip chimera
3n97-assembly1_A 0.30 0.72 3.4e+00 3n97-assembly1_A RNA polymerase alpha C-terminal domain (E. coli) and sigma region 4 (T. aq. mutant) bound to (UP,-35 element) DNA
7kuf-assembly1_B 0.23 0.58 2.3e+00 7kuf-assembly1_B Transcription activation subcomplex with WhiB7 bound to SigmaAr4-RNAP Beta flap tip chimera and DNA
6lts-assembly1_F 0.18 0.43 1.9e+00 6lts-assembly1_F Crystal structure of Thermus thermophilus transcription initiation complex comprising a truncated sigma finger
7ye2-assembly1_F 0.16 0.57 3.2e+00 7ye2-assembly1_F The cryo-EM structure of C. crescentus GcrA-TACdown
6ono-assembly2_D 0.13 0.57 5.2e+00 6ono-assembly2_D Complex structure of WhiB1 and region 4 of SigA in C2221 space group

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

Closest characterised functional partner: Rv0431 (tuberculin-like peptide), high confidence from genomic context alone (score 856 excluding text-mining). This association is the citable seed of a function hypothesis for this hypothetical protein.

PartnerProductScoreNo text-miningChannels (≥400)
Rv0431 tuberculin-like peptide 856 856 ctx neighborhood:835
Rv0433 carboxylate-amine ligase 822 822 ctx neighborhood:795
Rv0432 sodC superoxide dismutase 797 797 ctx neighborhood:795
Rv0434 hyp hypothetical protein 740 741 ctx neighborhood:739
Rv0429c def polypeptide deformylase 701 702 ctx neighborhood:698
Rv0428c GCN5-like N-acetyltransferase 699 700 ctx neighborhood:698
Rv0427c xthA exodeoxyribonuclease III protein XthA 699 700 ctx neighborhood:698
Rv3258c hyp hypothetical protein 522 504
Rv0819 mshD mycothiol acetyltransferase 504 504 ctx cooccurence:486
Rv2242 hyp hypothetical protein 477 478 ctx cooccurence:476
Rv2199c ctaF cytochrome c oxidase polypeptide 4 476 477 ctx cooccurence:470
Rv2229c hyp hypothetical protein 452 452 ctx cooccurence:449
Rv3260c whiB2 transcriptional regulator WhiB2 448 448
Rv2680 hyp hypothetical protein 463 443 ctx cooccurence:424
Rv3683 hyp hypothetical protein 436 437 ctx cooccurence:434

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 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

  • RefSeq: hypothetical protein
  • NAP features: length/supercoil-dependent DNA binding, A/T-rich preference, DNA bridging/coating, protection (Datta 2019, PMID 30872139)
  • Modulates supercoiling; stimulates topoisomerase I relaxation activity
  • First gene of the virR-sodC operon; supercoiling-responsive virulence regulator; renamed NapA
  • Curated from the literature crible (project 'Still unknown gene function', 2026-06-09)

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_214944.1)
  • Domains: Pfam-A via hmmscan --cut_ga — DUF3263 (PF11662.14)
  • 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 2CUM0
  • Curated reference: UniProt P96276 (TrEMBL, unreviewed; Evidence at protein 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)
  • Model confidence: ESMFold per-residue pLDDT (mean 63.1, low)
  • Interaction network: STRING v12.0 (Szklarczyk et al. 2023, doi:10.1093/nar/gkac1000), taxon 83332, CC-BY 4.0 — 24 functional partner(s); context anchor Rv0431
  • Primary literature: Datta C, Jha RK, Ganguly S, Nagaraja V (2019). NapA (Rv0430), a Novel Nucleoid-Associated Protein that Regulates a Virulence Operon in Mycobacterium tuberculosis in a Supercoiling-Dependent Manner J Mol Biol 431(8):1576-1591. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2019.02.029 PMID:30872139

Ancestral MTBC0 protein sequence

>mtbc0_000452|Rv0430|napA
MDSAMARAIRSGDDAEVADGLTRREHDILAFERQWWKFAGVKEEAIKELFSMSATRYYQVLNALVDRPEALAADPMLVKRLRRLRASRQKARAARRLGFEVT