celA2a Family assigned · low auto-curated · to review

H37Rv Rv1089A · MTBC0 · 34 aa · 1215517–1215621 H37Rv (+) · RefSeq

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Annotation: from legacy to revised

Legacy (H37Rv / Mycobrowser)Probable cellulase CelA2a (endo-1,4-beta-glucanase) (endoglucanase) (carboxymethyl cellulase)
MTBC0 PGAP re-annotation
Revised (this work)The biological conversion of cellulose to glucose generally requires three types of hydrolytic enzymes: (1) endoglucanases which cut internal beta-1,4-glucosidic bonds; (2) exocellobiohydrolases that cut the dissaccharide cellobiose from the nonreducing end of the cellulose polymer chain; (3) beta-1,4-glucosidases which hydrolyze the cellobiose and other short cello-oligosaccharides to glucose [catalytic activity:endohydrolysis of 1,4-beta-D-glucosidic linkages in cellulose].
Functional category (TubercuList)intermediary metabolism and respiration

Curation note: Added P16.5d: Mycobrowser-annotated gene absent from RefSeq NC_000962.3 (the atlas' original 3906-CDS reference). Foundation record from the Mycobrowser release + translated H37Rv sequence; heavy enrichment layers (structure, orthology, conservation, interaction) pending.

Auto-curated: this verdict and function were generated by rules from PGAP + Pfam + Foldseek and have not been hand-reviewed (flagged for human review).

In the literature (TB corpus sweep)

This distinguishes a gene that is dark because nobody has looked from one that is dark despite having been studied. Source: .

Legacy record & comparison (Mycobrowser)

Mycobrowser functionThe biological conversion of cellulose to glucose generally requires three types of hydrolytic enzymes: (1) endoglucanases which cut internal beta-1,4-glucosidic bonds; (2) exocellobiohydrolases that cut the dissaccharide cellobiose from the nonreducing end of the cellulose polymer chain; (3) beta-1,4-glucosidases which hydrolyze the cellobiose and other short cello-oligosaccharides to glucose [catalytic activity:endohydrolysis of 1,4-beta-D-glucosidic linkages in cellulose].
Mycobrowser EC 3, ., 2, ., 1, ., 4

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 Mycobrowser is no longer maintained; its EC numbers predate recent nomenclature revisions, so a class change usually reflects re-numbering, not a conflict.

Curated reference (UniProt)

UniProt Q79FS6 TrEMBL · unreviewed
UniProt nameProbable cellulase CelA2a (Endo-1,4-beta-glucanase) (Endoglucanase) (Carboxymethyl cellulase)

Functional vocabulary (eggNOG-mapper, orthology transfer)

COG category G Carbohydrate transport and metabolism
Preferred namecelA1
eggNOG descriptionGlycosyl hydrolase family 12
Orthologous groupCOG3325
EC number EC 3.2.1.4
KEGG orthology ko:K01179
KEGG pathways ko00500, ko01100, map00500, map01100
CAZy family GH5, GH9

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 0.312 · purifying
Polymorphic sites (≥ 0.1% of strains) 1 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.

Essentiality (transposon mutagenesis)

DeJesus 2017 callNE · non-essential
What the call meansnon-essential
TA sites (Himar1) 2 in the ORF — 0 in the essential state, 0 growth-defect, 2 non-essential, 0 growth-advantage. Saturation 1.000, mean read count 198. A region of the protein devoid of TA sites is invisible to this assay: nothing can be inferred about it, in either direction.
CaveatStatistically thin call: only 2 TA (Himar1) sites in the whole ORF (atlas median 13; genes under 300 nt typically have very few). A DeJesus 2017 call built on so few independent observations is less robust than the same call on a longer gene, in either direction. Cross-check against the CRISPRi vulnerability index (independent of TA-site density) and, if this gene overlaps a neighbour (see Genomic-neighbour overlap section below), verify how many of its TA sites actually fall inside its own ORF. (P20.3)

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.

Mutant phenotypes (conditional Tn-seq, MtbTnDB) in-vivo phenotype

Conditionlog2FCqEffect
fitness in mouse infection (in vivo) -3.030.0 required
fitness in mouse infection (in vivo) -2.420.027 required

Conditional fitness of transposon-disruption mutants across 2 significant condition(s) (|log2FC|≥1, q≤0.05), from the standardized MtbTnDB compendium. A negative log2FC means the mutant is depleted — the gene contributes to fitness in that condition. An in-vivo defect for a "hypothetical" is strong evidence it matters for infection, even without a known molecular function. Disruption (Tn insertion), not a clean deletion; genetic-interaction screens excluded.

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) signal peptide

Predictionpredicted secreted protein (signal peptide)
DeepTMHMM classSP

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)

Length34 aa
Molecular weight3.5 kDa
Theoretical pI6.2
GRAVY-0.179 (hydrophilic)
Aliphatic index63.2
Aromaticity0.088
Instability index20.6 (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)

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

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

Regulated by (2 TF) Rv0474 (activates) · espR (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)

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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: celA2b (Rv1090, (MTV017.43), len: 151 aa. Probable celA2b,second part of cellulase (endoglucanase), similar to C-terminus of others e.g. O08468 cell), high confidence from genomic context alone (score 978 excluding text-mining).

PartnerProductScoreNo text-miningChannels (≥400)
Rv1090 celA2b exp Rv1090, (MTV017.43), len: 151 aa. Probable celA2b,second part of cellulase (endoglucanase), similar to C-terminus of others e.g. O08468 cell 991 978 ctx neighborhood:773 database:900 textmining:653
Rv0062 celA1 exp cellulase CelA 903 904 database:900
Rv0186 bglS exp beta-glucosidase BglS 900 901 database:900
Rv1675c cmr HTH-type transcriptional regulator Cmr 800 800 coexpression:800
Rv1135A Rv1135A, len: 80 aa. Possible acetyl-CoA acetyltransferase (possible gene fragment), highly similar to other acetyl-CoA acetyltransferases e 800 800 coexpression:800
Rv3167c TetR family transcriptional regulator 796 796 coexpression:796
Rv3840 transcriptional regulator 788 788 coexpression:788
Rv2282c LysR family HTH-type transcriptional regulator 785 785 coexpression:785
Rv3082c virS HTH-type transcriptional regulator VirS 761 761 coexpression:761
Rv0603 hyp hypothetical protein 732 732 coexpression:732
Rv1189 sigI ECF RNA polymerase sigma factor SigI 731 731 coexpression:731
Rv3449 mycP4 membrane-anchored mycosin 731 731 coexpression:731
Rv1267c embR transcriptional regulator EmbR 731 731 coexpression:731
Rv0602c tcrA two component DNA binding transcriptional regulator TcrA 730 730 coexpression:730
Rv1151c cobB NAD-dependent protein deacylase 703 703 coexpression:703

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.

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 )
  • 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 COG3325
  • Curated reference: UniProt Q79FS6 (TrEMBL, unreviewed)
  • Intra-MTBC selection: pN/pS and disruption from SPDI variants of 145 209 MTBC strains (this work, local collection vs H37Rv NC_000962.3)
  • Interaction network: STRING v12.0 (Szklarczyk et al. 2023, doi:10.1093/nar/gkac1000), taxon 83332, CC-BY 4.0 — 32 functional partner(s); context anchor celA2b
  • 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)
  • 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)
  • Mutant phenotypes: standardized Tn-seq compendium MtbTnDB (Jinich et al. 2025, doi:10.1111/mmi.15370), aggregating many primary Tn-seq studies across conditions
  • 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

>|Rv1089A|celA2a
MNGAAPTNGAPLSYPSICEGVHWGHLVGGHQPAY