Deep N-terminomics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv extensively correct annotated encoding genes

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) is a severe causing agent of tuberculosis (TB). Although H37Rv, the type strain of M. tuberculosis was sequenced in 1998, annotation errors of encoding genes have been frequently reported in hundreds of papers. This phenomenon is particularly severe at the 5′ end of the genes. Here, we applied a TMPP [(N-Succinimidyloxycarbonylmethyl) tris (2,4,6-trimethoxyphenyl) phosphonium bromide] labeling combined with StageTip separating strategy on M. tuberculosis H37Rv to characterize the N-terminal start sites of its annotated encoding genes. Totally, 1047 proteins were identified with 2058 TMPP labeled N-terminal peptides from all the 2625 mass spectrometer (MS) sequenced proteins. Comparative genomics analysis allowed the re-annotation of 43 proteins' N-termini in H37Rv and 762 proteins in Mycobacteriaceae. All revised N-termini start sites were distributed in 5’-UTR of annotated genes due to over-annotation of previous N-terminal initiation codon, especially the ATG. In addition, we identified and verified a novel gene Rv1078A in +3 frame different from the annotated gene Rv1078 in +2 frame. Altogether, our findings contribute to the better understanding of N-terminal of H37Rv and other species from Mycobacteriaceae that can assist future studies on biological study.