PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for tr|Q9I3A6|Q9I3A6_PSEAE Phosphohistidine phosphatase SixA OS=Pseudomonas aeruginosa (strain ATCC 15692 / DSM 22644 / CIP 104116 / JCM 14847 / LMG 12228 / 1C / PRS 101 / PAO1) OX=208964 GN=PA1616 PE=4 SV=1 (154 a.a., MKLWLLRHGE...)

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 21 similar proteins in the literature:

PA1616 hypothetical protein from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
Q9I3A6 Phosphohistidine phosphatase SixA from Pseudomonas aeruginosa (strain ATCC 15692 / DSM 22644 / CIP 104116 / JCM 14847 / LMG 12228 / 1C / PRS 101 / PAO1)
100% identity, 100% coverage

P44164 Phosphohistidine phosphatase SixA homolog from Haemophilus influenzae (strain ATCC 51907 / DSM 11121 / KW20 / Rd)
HI1338 conserved hypothetical protein from Haemophilus influenzae Rd KW20
34% identity, 83% coverage

RSc1539 PROBABLE HYDROLASE PROTEIN from Ralstonia solanacearum GMI1000
43% identity, 77% coverage

BJD94_00805 phosphohistidine phosphatase SixA from Vibrio vulnificus Env1
35% identity, 87% coverage

YPTB2635 putative phosphohistidine phosphatase from Yersinia pseudotuberculosis IP 32953
YPO2748 putative phosphohistidine phosphatase from Yersinia pestis CO92
35% identity, 83% coverage

SENTW_2511 phosphohistidine phosphatase SixA from Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Weltevreden str.
34% identity, 88% coverage

STM2387 phosphohistidine phosphatase from Salmonella typhimurium LT2
34% identity, 88% coverage

1ujcA / P76502 Structure of the protein histidine phosphatase sixa complexed with tungstate (see paper)
34% identity, 90% coverage

YfcW / b2340 phosphohistidine phosphatase SixA from Escherichia coli K-12 substr. MG1655 (see 10 papers)
P76502 phosphohistidine phosphatase (EC 3.9.1.3) from Escherichia coli (see 2 papers)
NP_416842 phosphohistidine phosphatase SixA from Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655
b2340 phosphohistidine phosphatase from Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655
34% identity, 88% coverage

UTI89_C2624 phosphohistidine phosphatase SixA from Escherichia coli UTI89
34% identity, 88% coverage

MCR_0837 SixA phosphatase family protein from Moraxella catarrhalis BBH18
31% identity, 94% coverage

sll0400 phosphohistidine phosphatase SixA from Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803
Q55129 Uncharacterized protein sll0400 from Synechocystis sp. (strain ATCC 27184 / PCC 6803 / Kazusa)
NP_442193 hypothetical protein from Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803
35% identity, 81% coverage

C4X49_12010 SixA phosphatase family protein from Acinetobacter baumannii
31% identity, 98% coverage

SSO1195 Phosphohistidine phosphatase (sixA) from Sulfolobus solfataricus P2
35% identity, 68% coverage

AF1002 conserved hypothetical protein from Archaeoglobus fulgidus DSM 4304
36% identity, 77% coverage

NE0848 Phosphoglycerate mutase family from Nitrosomonas europaea ATCC 19718
36% identity, 77% coverage

LIMLP_16015 phosphohistidine phosphatase SixA from Leptospira interrogans serovar Manilae
31% identity, 69% coverage

Q82ZR6 Phosphoglycerate mutase family protein from Enterococcus faecalis (strain ATCC 700802 / V583)
EF2982 phosphoglycerate mutase family protein from Enterococcus faecalis V583
OG1RF_12264 histidine phosphatase family protein from Enterococcus faecalis OG1RF
33% identity, 55% coverage

J2N86_RS13365 histidine phosphatase family protein from Legionella lytica
34% identity, 34% coverage

SCO1809 hypothetical protein from Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2)
30% identity, 66% coverage

YtjC / b4395 putative phosphatase from Escherichia coli K-12 substr. MG1655 (see 7 papers)
gpmB / RF|NP_418812 PGAM from Escherichia coli K12 (see paper)
P0A7A2 Probable phosphoglycerate mutase GpmB from Escherichia coli (strain K12)
b4395 phosphoglycerate mutase from Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655
DR76_2507 2,3-diphosphoglycerate-dependent phosphoglycerate mutase GpmB from Escherichia coli ATCC 25922
34% identity, 31% 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 798,070 different protein sequences to 1,261,478 scientific articles. Searches against EuropePMC were last performed on May 12 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