PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for sp|Q9I507|Y951_PSEAE UPF0761 membrane protein PA0951 OS=Pseudomonas aeruginosa (strain ATCC 15692 / DSM 22644 / CIP 104116 / JCM 14847 / LMG 12228 / 1C / PRS 101 / PAO1) OX=208964 GN=PA0951 PE=3 SV=1 (411 a.a., MREHFNDGVE...)

Other sequence analysis tools:

Find functional residues: SitesBLAST

Search for conserved domains

Find the best match in UniProt

Compare to protein structures

Predict transmenbrane helices: Phobius

Predict protein localization: PSORTb

Find homologs in fast.genomics

Fitness BLAST: loading...

Found 31 similar proteins in the literature:

ABUW_0456 YihY family inner membrane protein from Acinetobacter baumannii
37% identity, 87% coverage

VF_0100 ribonuclease BN from Vibrio fischeri ES114
VF_0100 virulence factor BrkB family protein from Aliivibrio fischeri ES114
43% identity, 66% coverage

SO4401 ribonuclease BN from Shewanella oneidensis MR-1
46% identity, 61% coverage

VC2742 ribonuclease BN from Vibrio cholerae O1 biovar eltor str. N16961
44% identity, 66% coverage

ETAE_3490 ribonuclease BN from Edwardsiella tarda EIB202
42% identity, 64% coverage

BCAL1463 putative tRNA processing exoribonuclease from Burkholderia cenocepacia J2315
42% identity, 60% coverage

YPO0028 ribonuclease BN from Yersinia pestis CO92
39% identity, 65% coverage

YP_0029 ribonuclease BN from Yersinia pestis biovar Medievalis str. 91001
39% identity, 65% coverage

PM1616 Rbn from Pasteurella multocida subsp. multocida str. Pm70
39% identity, 66% coverage

Rbn / b3886 PF03631 family membrane protein YihY from Escherichia coli K-12 substr. MG1655 (see 2 papers)
YIHY_ECOLI / P0A8K8 UPF0761 membrane protein YihY from Escherichia coli (strain K12) (see paper)
b3886 ribonuclease BN from Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655
39% identity, 63% coverage

HI0276 ribonuclease BN (rbn) from Haemophilus influenzae Rd KW20
38% identity, 63% coverage

ESA_04062 virulence factor BrkB family protein from Cronobacter sakazakii ATCC BAA-894
38% identity, 64% coverage

NGO0127 putative tRNA processing exoribonuclease BN from Neisseria gonorrhoeae FA 1090
Q5FAA1 UPF0761 membrane protein NGO_0127 from Neisseria gonorrhoeae (strain ATCC 700825 / FA 1090)
36% identity, 91% coverage

NMA0700 putative ribonuclease BN from Neisseria meningitidis Z2491
35% identity, 91% coverage

PG0958 ribonuclease BN, putative from Porphyromonas gingivalis W83
30% identity, 63% coverage

Q7UQD0 Probable ribonuclease BN from Rhodopirellula baltica (strain DSM 10527 / NCIMB 13988 / SH1)
48% identity, 15% coverage

SERP1421 ribonuclease BN, putative from Staphylococcus epidermidis RP62A
28% identity, 62% coverage

Cj1212c putative ribonuclease BN from Campylobacter jejuni subsp. jejuni NCTC 11168
CJJ81176_1225 YihY family protein from Campylobacter jejuni subsp. jejuni 81-176
29% identity, 57% coverage

Npun_R2514 putative ribonuclease BN from Nostoc punctiforme
25% identity, 58% coverage

LBDG_22000 YihY/virulence factor BrkB family protein from Leptolyngbya boryana dg5
28% identity, 58% coverage

PA2751 hypothetical protein from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
26% identity, 60% coverage

AKJ12_RS16605 YihY/virulence factor BrkB family protein from Xanthomonas arboricola pv. juglandis
31% identity, 50% coverage

BCAM1016 putative ribonuclease from Burkholderia cenocepacia J2315
24% identity, 59% coverage

brkB / AAA51647.1 BrkB from Bordetella pertussis (see 2 papers)
28% identity, 64% coverage

lmo1706 similar to transport proteins from Listeria monocytogenes EGD-e
24% identity, 67% coverage

BSU07900 putative integral inner membrane protein with ribonuclease fold from Bacillus subtilis subsp. subtilis str. 168
30% identity, 25% coverage

ACSP50_3383 YihY/virulence factor BrkB family protein from Actinoplanes sp. SE50/110
23% identity, 62% coverage

BC0452 Ribonuclease BN from Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579
23% identity, 62% coverage

SYNW2185 similar to serum resistance locus BrkB from Synechococcus sp. WH 8102
25% identity, 61% coverage

SACOL1941 ribonuclease BN, putative from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus COL
26% identity, 61% coverage

SA1699 hypothetical protein from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus N315
26% identity, 61% coverage

New Search

For advice on how to use these tools together, see Interactive tools for functional annotation of bacterial genomes.

Statistics

The PaperBLAST database links 793,807 different protein sequences to 1,259,118 scientific articles. Searches against EuropePMC were last performed on March 13 2025.

How It Works

PaperBLAST builds a database of protein sequences that are linked to scientific articles. These links come from automated text searches against the articles in EuropePMC and from manually-curated information from GeneRIF, UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot, BRENDA, CAZy (as made available by dbCAN), BioLiP, CharProtDB, MetaCyc, EcoCyc, TCDB, REBASE, the Fitness Browser, and a subset of the European Nucleotide Archive with the /experiment tag. Given this database and a protein sequence query, PaperBLAST uses protein-protein BLAST to find similar sequences with E < 0.001.

To build the database, we query EuropePMC with locus tags, with RefSeq protein identifiers, and with UniProt accessions. We obtain the locus tags from RefSeq or from MicrobesOnline. We use queries of the form "locus_tag AND genus_name" to try to ensure that the paper is actually discussing that gene. Because EuropePMC indexes most recent biomedical papers, even if they are not open access, some of the links may be to papers that you cannot read or that our computers cannot read. We query each of these identifiers that appears in the open access part of EuropePMC, as well as every locus tag that appears in the 500 most-referenced genomes, so that a gene may appear in the PaperBLAST results even though none of the papers that mention it are open access. We also incorporate text-mined links from EuropePMC that link open access articles to UniProt or RefSeq identifiers. (This yields some additional links because EuropePMC uses different heuristics for their text mining than we do.)

For every article that mentions a locus tag, a RefSeq protein identifier, or a UniProt accession, we try to select one or two snippets of text that refer to the protein. If we cannot get access to the full text, we try to select a snippet from the abstract, but unfortunately, unique identifiers such as locus tags are rarely provided in abstracts.

PaperBLAST also incorporates manually-curated protein functions:

Except for GeneRIF and ENA, the curated entries include a short curated description of the protein's function. For entries from BioLiP, the protein's function may not be known beyond binding to the ligand. Many of these entries also link to articles in PubMed.

For more information see the PaperBLAST paper (mSystems 2017) or the code. You can download PaperBLAST's database here.

Changes to PaperBLAST since the paper was written:

Many of these changes are described in Interactive tools for functional annotation of bacterial genomes.

Secrets

PaperBLAST cannot provide snippets for many of the papers that are published in non-open-access journals. This limitation applies even if the paper is marked as "free" on the publisher's web site and is available in PubmedCentral or EuropePMC. If a journal that you publish in is marked as "secret," please consider publishing elsewhere.

Omissions from the PaperBLAST Database

Many important articles are missing from PaperBLAST, either because the article's full text is not in EuropePMC (as for many older articles), or because the paper does not mention a protein identifier such as a locus tag, or because of PaperBLAST's heuristics. If you notice an article that characterizes a protein's function but is missing from PaperBLAST, please notify the curators at UniProt or add an entry to GeneRIF. Entries in either of these databases will eventually be incorporated into PaperBLAST. Note that to add an entry to UniProt, you will need to find the UniProt identifier for the protein. If the protein is not already in UniProt, you can ask them to create an entry. To add an entry to GeneRIF, you will need an NCBI Gene identifier, but unfortunately many prokaryotic proteins in RefSeq do not have corresponding Gene identifers.

References

PaperBLAST: Text-mining papers for information about homologs.
M. N. Price and A. P. Arkin (2017). mSystems, 10.1128/mSystems.00039-17.

Europe PMC in 2017.
M. Levchenko et al (2017). Nucleic Acids Research, 10.1093/nar/gkx1005.

Gene indexing: characterization and analysis of NLM's GeneRIFs.
J. A. Mitchell et al (2003). AMIA Annu Symp Proc 2003:460-464.

UniProt: the universal protein knowledgebase.
The UniProt Consortium (2016). Nucleic Acids Research, 10.1093/nar/gkw1099.

BRENDA in 2017: new perspectives and new tools in BRENDA.
S. Placzek et al (2017). Nucleic Acids Research, 10.1093/nar/gkw952.

The EcoCyc database: reflecting new knowledge about Escherichia coli K-12.
I. M. Keeseler et al (2016). Nucleic Acids Research, 10.1093/nar/gkw1003.

The MetaCyc database of metabolic pathways and enzymes.
R. Caspi et al (2018). Nucleic Acids Research, 10.1093/nar/gkx935.

CharProtDB: a database of experimentally characterized protein annotations.
R. Madupu et al (2012). Nucleic Acids Research, 10.1093/nar/gkr1133.

The carbohydrate-active enzymes database (CAZy) in 2013.
V. Lombard et al (2014). Nucleic Acids Research, 10.1093/nar/gkt1178.

The Transporter Classification Database (TCDB): recent advances
M. H. Saier, Jr. et al (2016). Nucleic Acids Research, 10.1093/nar/gkv1103.

REBASE - a database for DNA restriction and modification: enzymes, genes and genomes.
R. J. Roberts et al (2015). Nucleic Acids Research, 10.1093/nar/gku1046.

Deep annotation of protein function across diverse bacteria from mutant phenotypes.
M. N. Price et al (2016). bioRxiv, 10.1101/072470.

by Morgan Price, Arkin group
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory