cpnT Resolved · high auto-curated

Annotation: from legacy to revised

Auto-curated: this verdict and function were generated by rules from PGAP + Pfam + Foldseek and have not been hand-reviewed.

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.

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) partially disordered

carries a substantial disordered region (305/846 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).

Genomic-neighbour overlap (structural caveat) co-directional · 0 % of gene

co-directional overlap: ordinary (e.g. shared stop/start codons in an operon), not the Rv2438A-type artefact P20.1, derived from GFF3 gene coordinates, 2026-08-03.

CRISPRi vulnerability

Vulnerability index 0.81 (95% CI -1.37 to 3.88). 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=0.318 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=15 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), EC number, COG category, 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)

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

Read the disruption percentage against its ceiling, not against 100%. The strain collection is deeply imbalanced by clade, so a loss fixed in an entire lineage still shows a small overall fraction: a gene disrupted in every L6 strain caps at 0.96% of the collection, in every M. caprae strain at 0.20%, in every M. microti strain at 0.02%. Of the 705 clades in this collection, 689 have a ceiling below 1%. A figure of "0.15% of strains" is therefore uninterpretable on its own — it can be noise or a complete, lineage-defining loss. Use the clade attribution row above, which gives the sub-clade sizes, and never read the percentage alone.

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.

Regions of Difference (lineage deletions)

This locus overlaps a Region of Difference — a large deletion that is absent in the listed lineages (from the consolidated MTBC RD analysis over ~145 000 strains; H37Rv coordinates). The gene-overlap column is the fraction of the gene inside the RD. RD deletions are classic lineage markers (e.g. RD9 absent in the animal / M. africanum lineages); a gene deleted in a whole lineage is dispensable there. Lineages tagged n=…, not statistical are the rarest MTBC ecotypes (e.g. the chimpanzee bacillus, M. mungi, M. suricattae), where only a handful of strains have ever been sequenced: the figure is a single-sample observation, not a population frequency, and is shown rather than silently dropped because for these lineages every sequenced strain is itself informative.

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. Read the dataset count as abundance, not as replication. Measured across this atlas (3,491 detected proteins), the number of datasets a protein appears in tracks its abundance almost monotonically: median 1.2 ppm at 1 dataset of 16, 27 ppm at 10, 392 ppm at 15, 1,325 ppm at 16 — three orders of magnitude. A high count therefore says the protein is abundant more than it says several independent experiments confirmed it. What the count does establish, at any value, is that the product exists.

Predicted localisation (DeepTMHMM + lipobox) lipoprotein

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)

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

Experimental structure 4qlp (PDBe), the strongest available structural evidence for this gene. Drag to rotate, scroll to zoom; hetero-groups (ligands, ions, waters hidden by default) shown as sticks.

Experimental structures (Protein Data Bank) 1 solved

Experimentally solved structures mapped from the UniProt accession via PDBe/SIFTS (1 total; up to 8 shown, ranked by sequence coverage then resolution). An experimental structure is direct proof of the folded product and the strongest structural evidence — superseding the predicted ESMFold/AlphaFold models below for any covered region.

Genomic context (neighbours & predicted operon) operon of 4

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.

Additional regulons (curated, outside the TFOE-derived TRN)

Curated from primary literature not covered by the ISB signed TRN (Minch 2015 / Rustad 2014): Zur regulon (Maciag et al. 2007, PMID 17098899), SigG regulon (Gaudion et al. 2013, PMID 23871545), LexA/SOS regulon (Smollett et al. 2012, PMID 22528497) — added P16.25 (2026-08-18); CRP regulon (Kahramanoglou et al. 2014, PMID 24957601) — added P16.25b (2026-09-27). Confidence and caveats are per-edge and carried from the source paper — read them before citing a specific gene as "regulated by" its listed TF. An entry reading "binding site only — direction not determined" is not a regulation claim: it records a measured ChIP-seq binding site for which the source reports no expression change, and the absence of such a change is not evidence of absent regulation.

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: ift (hypothetical protein), high confidence (score 978, all STRING channels except text-mining; the partner is chosen on its genomic-context evidence). The pair rests on an interaction measured in M. tuberculosis itself (own experimental score 817): a measured association in this organism, as opposed to one carried over from other proteomes.

Showing the 15 strongest of this gene's 184 partners at medium confidence (69 at high confidence). The table is an extract, not a neighbourhood: across the proteome the real median degree is 34 while the served median is 15, so no hub, degree distribution or centrality may be read on this table. Of the 184 partners, 1 rest on an interaction measured in M. tuberculosis itself.

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

• Legacy H37Rv annotation: hypothetical protein
• MTBC0 PGAP product: outer membrane channel protein/necrotizing toxin glycohydrolase CpnT
• Pfam (hmmscan --cut_ga): WXG100_2 PF25547.2 (E=6e-07), TNT PF14021.13 (E=5e-14)
• (auto-curated by rules from PGAP + Pfam + Foldseek; not hand-reviewed)

Ancestral MTBC0 protein sequence

>mtbc0_004137|Rv3903c|cpnT
MAPLAVDPAALDSAGGAVVAAGAGLGAVISSLTAALAGCAGMAGDDPAGAVFGRSYDGSAAALVQAMSVARNGLCNLGDGVRMSAHNYSLAEAMSDVAGRAAPLPAPPPSGCVGVGAPPSAVGGGGGAPKGWGWVAPYIGMIWPNGDSTKLRAAAVAWRSAGTQFALTEIQSTAGPMGVIRAQQLPEAGLIESAFADAYASTTAVVGQCHQLAAQLDAYAARIDAVHAAVLDLLARICDPLTGIKEVWEFLTDQDEDEIQRIAHDIAVVVDQFSGEVDALAAEITAVVSHAEAVITAMADHAGKQWDRFLHSNPVGVVIDGTGQQLKGFGEEAFGMAKDSWDLGPLRASIDPFGWYRSWEEMLTGMAPLAGLGGENAPGVVESWKQFGKSLIHWDEWTTNPNEALGKTVFDAATLALPGGPLSKLGSKGRDILAGVRGLKERLEPTTPHLEPPATPPRPGPQPPRIEPPESGHPAPAPAAKPAPVPANGPLPHSPTESKPPPVDRPAEPVAPSSASAGQPRVSAATTPGTHVPHGLPQPGEHVPAQAPPATTLLGGPPVESAPATAHQPQWATTPAAPAAAPHSTPGGVHSTESGPHGRSLSAHGSEPTHDGASHGSGHGSGSEPPGLHAPHREQQLAMHSNEPAGEGWHRLSDEAVDPQYGEPLSRHWDFTDNPADRSRINPVVAQLMEDPNAPFGRDPQGQPYTQERYQERFNSVGPWGQQYSNFPPNNGAVPGTRIAYTNLEKFLSDYGPQLDRIGGDQGKYLAIMEHGRPASWEQRALHVTSLRDPYHAYTIDWLPEGWFIEVSEVAPGCGQPGGSIQVRIFDHQNEMRKVEELIRRGVLRQ