Rv2308a 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) named only in full text

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.

Scope of the sweep: What was actually swept: the H37Rv locus tag and the ortholog locus tags (M. bovis Mb…, M. marinum MMAR_…, M. smegmatis MSMEG_…, M. leprae ML…, M. abscessus MAB_…), plus the gene name where one exists. NOT swept: protein and enzyme names, including family shorthands such as Ldt(Mt4) or VapC28, and their orthographic variants. An absent locus-tag mention is therefore evidence about the TAG, and only indirect evidence about the protein (P18.14).

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.

Conditional expression context (iModulons)

Member of 2 independently-modulated gene set(s): WhiB4 (whiB4), Unc_9.

iModulon membership (independently-modulated gene sets from a 647-sample RNA-seq compendium): the conditional co-expression context. Co-expression is a regulatory context, NOT a molecular function. Source: iModulonDB / modulome_mtb (Yoo 2022).

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, 142 601 strains, snapshot of 2026-09-29)

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) Mycobacterium

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.

Proteomics (mass spectrometry) not detected

Not detected in the mass-spectrometry datasets integrated by PaxDb. This is not evidence of absence, and this atlas can say which bias dominates, because it measured it on its own 482 undetected proteins. Size is the main factor: undetected proteins have a median length of 145 aa against 295 aa for detected ones, and 25.3 % of them are shorter than 100 aa against 6.0 %. Predicted localisation matters far less than usually assumed: detection rates are 89.3 % for globular, 84.9 % for transmembrane, 88.0 % for lipoproteins and 77.8 % for signal-peptide proteins — so a short protein is under-sampled whatever its predicted compartment, and hydrophobicity alone is a weak excuse. Condition-specific expression and few tryptic peptides (PE/PPE repeats) add to this.

Predicted localisation (DeepTMHMM + lipobox) no export signal, no TM helix

A verified absence of signals, which is not a compartment. No Sec/Tat signal peptide, no transmembrane helix and no lipobox were found on this sequence. The predictor reports topology and export signals; it does not measure where the protein ends up, so this page draws no cytoplasmic conclusion from it. In M. tuberculosis that reservation is not theoretical: the 12 Esx paralogues of this atlas — EsxA/ESAT-6 and EsxB/CFP-10 among them, the best-established secreted proteins of the species — carry this very call, because substrates of the type VII (ESX) secretion system leave no recognisable signal. « Secreted » and « no signal peptide » are true together here.

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)

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 (hmmscan --cut_ga scan completed).

Tentative domain (below the --cut_ga gathering threshold; a low-confidence homology lead, not a firm assignment): PIN_10 (PF18478.8), i-Evalue 2.4e-04, residues 57–88 — PIN like domain.

Structural neighbours (Foldseek on the ESMFold model, exploratory)

ESMFold model confidence: mean pLDDT 44.1 (very 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.

Genomic context (neighbours & predicted operon) operon of 2

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).

Published operon evidence (two independent sources)

Two independent published operon maps, cited alongside the distance heuristic above: an association corroborating or contradicting the heuristic, never proof of shared function. REMap's RNA-seq coverage continuity is the most direct of the three signals; Roback's logistic regression and the intergenic-distance heuristic are statistical proxies.

Functional interaction network (STRING v12)

This gene is absent from the STRING v12 proteome for M. tuberculosis H37Rv, so no interaction evidence could be queried for it at all — which is a statement about STRING's gene set, not about the protein.

Evidence

• Not annotated as a gene by RefSeq/PGAP (small ORF downstream of Rv2308)
• Foldseek/ESMFold: no significant hit (dark)
• HHpred: ribonuclease/PIN-like toxin profile, probability ~99% (distant family homology)
• Synteny: 45% id to M. canettii (full length); 100% id in M. bovis though unannotated (not an H37Rv artefact)
• AlphaFold3: poor monomer fold (pTM ~0.20), no complex (ipTM ~0.11), pairing unconfirmed
• Curated against the companion TA re-annotation (Guyeux 2026)

Ancestral MTBC0 protein sequence

>H37Rv|Rv2308a|
MLEVDKVTHVVDENLLRLGVALSPSEKTRPGLAARPSTTCYRKASSTPTGSPSSGVGWVVISNDRHLRTRPVEAELAVAHKLKVVHLHGRVGGLVRVGTADAAGCAVAGH