Rv2635 Resolved · high

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

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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

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, pebble.rockefeller.edu).

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, 145 209 strains)

pN/pS 0.314 · 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.

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.
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: 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.

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 (or not yet scanned).

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).

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

Explore full network →

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: Rv2636 (O-phosphotransferase), high confidence from genomic context alone (score 774 excluding text-mining). This association is the citable seed of a function hypothesis for this hypothetical protein.

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 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

  • 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 145 209 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
  • 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