Rv1444c Family assigned · low

Annotation: from legacy to revised

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) never studied

No publication in PubMed mentions this gene in its title or abstract — not under its H37Rv locus tag, nor under any of its ortholog identifiers (M. bovis, M. marinum, M. smegmatis, M. leprae, M. abscessus). The atlas annotation rests on sequence/structure evidence, not on a primary study of this gene.

A verified absence of literature is itself information: it flags an annotation with no primary study behind it. 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: 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/phase75, 2026-07-13.

Operon-context functional lead (hypothesis)

Co-transcribed within the operon Rv1444c-devB-opcA, pointing to oxidative pentose-phosphate pathway.

Basis: co-transcription in operon Rv1444c-devB-opcA + purifying selection. This is a contextual candidate association (guilt-by-co-transcription), not an established molecular function.

CRISPRi vulnerability

Vulnerability index -1.10 (95% CI -10.70 to 9.62). 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)

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)

Functional vocabulary (eggNOG-mapper, orthology transfer)

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) pseudogene candidate

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) Corynebacteriales

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)

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) detected

Detection by mass spectrometry is direct, experimental evidence that the protein product exists — orthogonal to sequence conservation and to Tn-seq essentiality, and especially decisive for a "hypothetical" locus. Reproducible detection across several independent datasets (PaxDb) makes the existence claim robust; the integrated abundance places the protein in the proteome's dynamic range.

Physico-chemical properties (computed, ProtParam)

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).

Tentative domain (below the --cut_ga gathering threshold; a low-confidence homology lead, not a firm assignment): BLOC1_2 (PF10046.15), i-Evalue 4.9e-05, residues 17–84 — Biogenesis of lysosome-related organelles complex-1 subunit 2.

Heterogeneous convergence — downgrade the hit above. 50 distinct Pfam families match the same window (17–84): APG6_N, ATG17_like, BLOC1_2, Baculo_PEP_C, CA109-like, CCDC22_CC, CCDC39, CENP-F_leu_zip, COG5_N, COLEC12, CdvA, DUF16, DUF1664, DUF2730, DUF3450, DUF5798, DUF6468, DUF7217, DUF7310, DUF8394, DUF948, DegS, FlaC_arch, HEF_HK, KfrA_N, LXG, Laminin_II, MCPsignal, Mce4_CUP1, NET2A, NPV_P10, Nsp1_C, PUMA_CC, PilJ, RPW8, Rod_CreS, STB2_C, SlyX, Snapin_Pallidin, Spc7, TMF_DNA_bd, TMP_3, TOP_N, TraF_2, Trimer_CC, Tropomyosin, Tweety, UPF0184, Vac_Fusion, WXG100. 50 HETEROGENEOUS Pfam families overlap the same window (17-84) with no dominant type: typical of a low-complexity or coiled-coil stretch that matches many unrelated models. Treat the top hit as WEAKER than its i-Evalue suggests, not stronger. Overlapping Pfam models of one superfamily are NOT independent evidence: their convergence is partly mechanical. Weigh the window, not the count.

Genomic context (neighbours & predicted operon) operon of 3

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).

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: devB (6-phosphogluconolactonase), high confidence from genomic context alone (score 871 excluding text-mining). This association is the citable seed of a function hypothesis for this hypothetical protein.

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): hypothetical protein
• (auto-curated by rules from PGAP + Pfam + Foldseek; not hand-reviewed)

Ancestral MTBC0 protein sequence

>H37Rv|Rv1444c|
MTVMADRSGRPAPVRRRMKTLTQAALNADKTVEQVEDVLDGLGKTMAELNSSLSQLNSTVERLEDGLDHLEGTLHSLDDLAKRLIVLVEPVEAIVDRIDYIVSLGETVMSPLSVTEHAVRGVLDRLRNRTVHEPTN