Rv2635 Resolved · high

H37Rv Rv2635 · MTBC0 mtbc0_002805 · 80 aa · 2986031–2986273 MTBC0 (+) · RefSeq NP_217151.1

Conflicting signals on this page. Two layers of this record disagree. Neither has been suppressed; what follows says what is known and what the disagreement means.
  • Both statements stand. UniProt labels this protein "Evidence at protein level", a curator's judgement whose basis (mass spectrometry, structure, antibody, Edman sequencing) this atlas does not record; PaxDb counts detections in 16 aggregated mass-spectrometry datasets and none detects it, which is not evidence of absence. The UniProt entry carries 5 annotation(s) with experimental support from 1 publication; this atlas has not checked whether any of them measures the protein itself. (uniprot protein level vs ms undetected, 2026-10-09)

Genomic neighbourhood (genome browser)

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This gene (outlined) in its genomic context; arrows are neighbouring genes coloured by verdict. Click any gene to navigate. Pan and zoom in the full browser.

Annotation: from legacy to revised

Legacy (H37Rv / Mycobrowser)hypothetical protein
MTBC0 PGAP re-annotationhypothetical protein
Revised (this work)Nucleoid-associated protein (NAP); a small intrinsically disordered protein (IDP) that undergoes liquid-liquid phase separation. RefSeq leaves this locus 'hypothetical protein'. By in-silico analysis and circular dichroism Rv2635 is established as an IDP; GFP-tagged Rv2635 phase-separates into reversible condensates (FRAP); it binds DNA sequence-independently (EMSA) and, when over-expressed in E. coli, causes nucleoid compaction and co-localises with the condensed nucleoid. Its unstructured regions are required for phase separation and its C-terminus for DNA binding, indicating a phase-separating NAP role in mycobacteria (Chandra 2025). Experimentally characterised.
Functional category (TubercuList)conserved hypotheticals

In the literature (TB corpus sweep) 1 publication

Found under: H37Rv (1).

1 TB publication mentions this gene. 1 publication(s) mention this gene (title/abstract), verified against the text. The atlas states the function; these are the primary sources that discuss it.

PublicationDate
Hypothetical protein Rv2635 of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is an intrinsically disordered nucleoid-associated protein that undergoes phase separation. doi:10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2025.145216 2025
1 record returned by the alias sweep

Searched as: Rv2635, Mb2668 — each in conjunction with a mycobacterial context term. Swept 2026-09-07.

PublicationJournalYear
Hypothetical protein Rv2635 of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is an intrinsically disordered nucleoid-associated protein that undergoes phase separation. doi:10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2025.145216 names it Int J Biol Macromol 2025

Title+abstract index only: a paper that names this gene solely in its body text, a figure legend or a supplement is invisible here. That is why this list sits beside the curated layer rather than replacing it - Rv0007's characterisation, found by a full-text sweep, returns zero in this one. Absence from this list is not absence from the literature. Source: PubMed E-utilities sweep (esearch + esummary), every alias of the gene searched in conjunction with a mycobacterial context term; ambiguous common-word aliases excluded. phase198, 2026-09-06.

This layer CITES the literature, it does not change the verdict or the function. A gene may be heavily studied (as an antigen, a resistance determinant, a drug target) while its molecular function is settled elsewhere in the fiche. 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.

Intrinsic disorder (sequence + structure) highly disordered

Predicted disorder100% of residues (metapredict) · mean AlphaFold pLDDT 49.8
Disordered regions1 IDR(s), longest 80 aa [0-80]

carries a substantial disordered region (80/80 residues); disorder is a property, not a function

A property (biophysics), not a function. No LLPS/condensate claim is made from disorder alone. Verdict unchanged. Source: metapredict v3 (Emenecker/Holehouse) per-residue disorder + AlphaFold mean pLDDT (annotation_mtbc P16.13).

Conditional expression context (iModulons)

Member of 1 independently-modulated gene set(s): SG_1.

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).

CRISPRi vulnerability

Vulnerability index 0.53 (95% CI -0.47 to 2.11). 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, supplementary Table S2 'mmc3.xlsx', bulk import via Europe PMC -- supersedes the per-gene pebble.rockefeller.edu scrape of phase46_crispri_vulnerability.py).

Caveat on this estimate. Bosch et al. flag this gene's vulnerability estimate as NOT certain, and here that call has a mechanical cause visible in the library itself: every guide targeting this gene is >=21 nt (str_span=0.210 on a 0-1 scale, near the genome floor), and guide repression strength saturates from 21 nt on -- so the library never sampled a partial knockdown for this gene, only the near-maximal repression plateau. The dose-response fit (and this VI) is therefore essentially unconstrained by data, not merely uncertain -- a limitation of the CRISPRi library design for the non-essential class (Bosch et al. 2021), not a defect in this specific measurement. n_guides=5 is descriptive only and does not predict this. Do not cite this VI as a standalone vulnerability claim.

Legacy record & comparison (Mycobrowser) ahead of Mycobrowser

Mycobrowser classes this locus among conserved hypotheticals; the atlas now assigns a functional handle (curated function (UniProt), requalified function). Mycobrowser is no longer maintained, so its EC numbers predate recent nomenclature revisions (e.g. the 2018 EC 7 "translocase" class) — most EC differences are re-numberings of the same enzyme, not conflicts.

Orthologues (reciprocal best hits across mycobacteria)

M. bovis Mb2668 · 100.0% identity
M. orygis RJtmp_002729 · 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 P9WL57 SwissProt · reviewed · Evidence at protein level
UniProt nameDNA-binding protein Rv2635
Curated functionIntrinsically disordered protein (IDP) that can bind to DNA in a sequence-independent fashion. Mediates chromatin compaction and may impose transcriptional regulation in bacteria during stress adaptation.

Conservation & selection (intra-MTBC, 142 601 strains, snapshot of 2026-09-29)

pN/pS 0.314 · quasi-invariant (2 sites), pN/pS underpowered
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.

Outgroup conservation (beyond the MTBC) MTBC-specific

Genus-wide presence (~53 non-MTBC Mycobacterium) present in 0/53 (0%) · 0/4 closest MTBAP relatives
absent from ALL 53 non-MTBC Mycobacterium genomes tested (incl. the closest MTBAP relatives) — a candidate MTBC-specific genetic innovation / host-adaptation factor (confirm by synteny; rule out a short/low-complexity ORF and extreme divergence)
Phylostratum (deepest detected homolog) MTBC-specific → Mycobacterium → Mycobacteriaceae → Corynebacteriales → Actinomycetia → Bacteria

short ORF (80 aa) a shallow stratum may reflect homology-detection failure, not true youth
absent from the whole genus and from all outgroups tested — a candidate MTBC-specific innovation (confirm by synteny; rule out detection failure for short/divergent ORFs)

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) 7 in the ORF — 0 in the essential state, 0 growth-defect, 7 non-essential, 0 growth-advantage. Saturation 1.000, mean read count 41.5714285714. A region of the protein devoid of TA sites is invisible to this assay: nothing can be inferred about it, in either direction.
All 7 sites lie in this ORF alone (no overlapping CDS shares any), so the call is attributable to this gene.
CaveatRead with some caution: only 7 TA (Himar1) sites in the whole ORF (atlas median 13). The DeJesus 2017 call rests on fewer independent observations than for a longer gene. If this gene overlaps a neighbour (see Genomic-neighbour overlap section below), some of these 7 sites may fall inside the neighbour's ORF rather than its own, leaving even fewer truly informative sites than the raw count suggests. (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.

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

Predictionno signal peptide, no TM helix (DeepTMHMM class GLOB)
DeepTMHMM classGLOB

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)

Length80 aa
Molecular weight8.9 kDa
Theoretical pI10.82
GRAVY-0.728 (hydrophilic)
Aliphatic index53.8
Aromaticity0.075
Instability index71.3 (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 (hmmscan --cut_ga scan completed).

3D structure (interactive — Mol*/pdbe-molstar)

No experimental structure is deposited for this gene: showing the AlphaFold DB predicted model (mean pLDDT 49.8, very low), coloured by per-residue confidence (dark blue = very high, orange/red = low — treat low-confidence regions as unreliable, especially termini and loops). Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom.

Genomic context (neighbours & predicted operon) operon of 2

Upstream (5' on genome)PE_PGRS46 (- strand, 28 bp gap)
Downstream (3' on genome)Rv2636 (+ strand, 0 bp gap)
Predicted operon Rv2635 · Rv2636

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)

Roback 2007 (logistic regression: distance + expression correlation, 474 microarrays) operon of 2: Rv2635 · Rv2636 — agrees with the distance heuristic above
REMap 2016 (RNA-seq coverage continuity, CDC1551, tag MT2713) not expressed (exponential phase)
not expressed (stationary phase)

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, guilt-by-association)

Explore full network →

Node colour = verdict, dashed = still uncharacterised; 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: Rv2636 (O-phosphotransferase), high confidence (score 774, all STRING channels except text-mining; the partner is chosen on its genomic-context evidence).

All 3 partner(s) at medium confidence are shown. None rests on an interaction measured in M. tuberculosis itself.

PartnerProductScoreNo text-miningChannels (≥400)
Rv2636 O-phosphotransferase 775 774 ctx neighborhood:773
Rv2634c PE_PGRS46 PE-PGRS family protein PE_PGRS46 575 575 ctx neighborhood:575
Rv2637 dedA transmembrane protein DedA 448 448 ctx neighborhood:446

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.

Where the experimental evidence comes from, and why it matters here. STRING's experimental channel fuses interactions measured in M. tuberculosis with interactions measured in another organism and transferred to this pair by orthology. The two are not equivalent for this atlas, whose standing rule is that better studied elsewhere is not a function established in M. tuberculosis. Measured on the served network: of the 38 229 partner pairs shown across the atlas, 13 483 partner rows carry a non-zero experimental channel, and only 106 pairs rest on an interaction measured in M. tuberculosis itself — 0.3 % of the network. Those 106 are long-established complexes (ESX-1/ESAT-6, RNA polymerase with CarD and RbpA, the Pup–Mpa proteasome, gyrase, Emb, GarA with PknB and PknG, the Rel modules); no still-uncharacterised gene is among them. The reason is not a gap in this atlas but in the literature: there is almost no experimental interactome of this bacterium, IntAct holding 134 curated protein pairs for a ~4 000-gene proteome. A exp (transferred) badge is therefore a lead, never a measurement, and an absence of badge is not evidence that the pair does not interact.

Evidence

  • RefSeq: hypothetical protein (small protein)
  • Intrinsically disordered protein (in-silico + CD); reversible phase separation (GFP/FRAP) (Chandra 2025, PMID 40513736)
  • Sequence-independent DNA binding (EMSA); nucleoid compaction and co-localisation on over-expression
  • Unstructured regions required for phase separation; C-terminus for DNA binding; phase-separating NAP
  • 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_217151.1)
  • Domains: Pfam-A via hmmscan --cut_ga — none above threshold
  • Sequence-level signal: ESM Atlas (EvolutionaryScale × BioHub) — exploratory
  • Curated reference: UniProt P9WL57 (SwissProt, reviewed; Evidence at protein level)
  • Intra-MTBC selection: pN/pS and disruption from SPDI variants of 142 601 MTBC strains (this work, local collection vs H37Rv NC_000962.3)
  • Model confidence: ESMFold per-residue pLDDT (mean 38.0, very low)
  • Interaction network: STRING v12.0 (Szklarczyk et al. 2023, doi:10.1093/nar/gkac1000), taxon 83332, CC-BY 4.0 — 3 functional partner(s); context anchor Rv2636
  • 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)
  • 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: Chandra G, Sharma R, Venugopal U, Ghosal D, Akhtar MS, Krishnan MY (2025). Hypothetical protein Rv2635 of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is an intrinsically disordered nucleoid-associated protein that undergoes phase separation Int J Biol Macromol 319(Pt 1):145216. doi:10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2025.145216 PMID:40513736

Ancestral MTBC0 protein sequence

>mtbc0_002805|Rv2635|
MVAADHRALGSNKSYPASQTAEAIWPPARTLRYDRQSPWLATGFDRRMSQTVTGVGVQNCAVSKRRCSAVDHSSRTPYRR