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The crystal structure of an uncharacterized hypothetical protein, TTHA1873 from Thermus thermophilus, has been determined by X-ray crystallography to a resolution of 1.78 Å using the single-wavelength anomalous dispersion method. The protein crystallized as a dimer in two space groups: P4 3 2 1 2 and P6 1 22. Structural analysis of the hypothetical protein revealed that the overall fold of TTHA1873 has a β-sandwich jelly-roll topology with nine β-strands. TTHA1873 is a dimeric metal-binding protein that binds to two Ca 2+ ions per chain, with one on the surface and the other stabilizing the dimeric interface of the two chains. A structural homology search indicates that the protein has moderate structural similarity to one domain of cell-surface proteins or agglutinin receptor proteins. Red blood cells showed visible agglutination at high concentrations of the hypothetical protein.

A decade after the concept of Pan-genome was first introduced; research in this field has spread its tentacles to areas such as pathogenesis of diseases, bacterial evolutionary studies and drug resistance. Gene content-based differentiation of virulent and a virulent strains of bacteria and identification of pathogen specific genes is imperative to understand their physiology and gain insights into the mechanism of genome evolution. Subsequently, this will aid in identifying diagnostic targets and in developing and selecting vaccines. The root of pan-genomic studies, however, is to identify the core genes, dispensable genes and strain specific genes across the genomes belonging to a clade. To this end, we have developed a tool, "PanGeT - Pan-genomics Tool" to compute the 'pan-genome' based on comparisons at the genome as well as the proteome levels. This automated tool is implemented using LaTeX libraries for effective visualization of overall pan-genome through graphical plots. Links to retrieve sequence information and functional annotations have also been provided. PanGeT can be downloaded from http://pranag.physics.iisc.ernet.in/PanGeT/ or https://github.com/PanGeTv1/PanGeT., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)