PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for MCAODC_10750 (73 a.a., MTTQSSPVIT...)

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 19 similar proteins in the literature:

SEN2806 glucarate dehydratase-related protein from Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Enteritidis str. P125109
97% identity, 16% coverage

SL1344_2942 enolase C-terminal domain-like protein from Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium str. SL1344
96% identity, 16% coverage

Z4104 No description from Escherichia coli O157:H7 EDL933
100% identity, 100% coverage

S2995 putative glucarate dehydratase from Shigella flexneri 2a str. 2457T
97% identity, 16% coverage

GudX / b2788 glucarate dehydratase-related protein from Escherichia coli K-12 substr. MG1655 (see 2 papers)
GUDX_ECOLI / Q46915 Glucarate dehydratase-related protein; GDH-RP; GlucDRP; EC 4.2.1.- from Escherichia coli (strain K12) (see paper)
gudX / RF|NP_417268 glucarate dehydratase-related protein from Escherichia coli K12
b2788 predicted glucarate dehydratase from Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655
96% identity, 16% coverage

c3352 Glucarate dehydratase related protein from Escherichia coli CFT073
96% identity, 16% coverage

OA04_36650 enolase C-terminal domain-like protein from Pectobacterium versatile
84% identity, 15% coverage

3n6hB / A6VQF6 Crystal structure of mandelate racemase/muconate lactonizing protein from actinobacillus succinogenes 130z complexed with magnesium/sulfate
74% identity, 16% coverage

STM2960 d-glucarate dehydratase from Salmonella typhimurium LT2
SL1344_2941, STM14_3568 glucarate dehydratase from Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhimurium str. 14028S
65% identity, 16% coverage

Z4102 putative glucarate dehydratase from Escherichia coli O157:H7 EDL933
64% identity, 16% coverage

YgcX / b2787 D-glucarate dehydratase (EC 4.2.1.40) from Escherichia coli K-12 substr. MG1655 (see 6 papers)
gudD / P0AES2 D-glucarate dehydratase (EC 4.2.1.40) from Escherichia coli (strain K12) (see 5 papers)
GUDD_ECOLI / P0AES2 Glucarate dehydratase; GDH; GlucD; D-glucarate dehydratase; EC 4.2.1.40 from Escherichia coli (strain K12) (see 3 papers)
gudD / RF|NP_417267 glucarate dehydratase; EC 4.2.1.40 from Escherichia coli K12 (see 8 papers)
b2787 (D)-glucarate dehydratase 1 from Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655
NP_417267 D-glucarate dehydratase from Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655
64% identity, 16% coverage

1ec9D / P0AES2 E. Coli glucarate dehydratase bound to xylarohydroxamate (see paper)
65% identity, 16% coverage

RSc1079 PROBABLE GLUCARATE DEHYDRATASE PROTEIN from Ralstonia solanacearum GMI1000
60% identity, 15% coverage

BCAL1043 glucarate dehydratase from Burkholderia cenocepacia J2315
K562_RS13470 glucarate dehydratase from Burkholderia cenocepacia
60% identity, 15% coverage

gudD / Q6FFQ2 D-glucarate dehydratase subunit (EC 4.2.1.40) from Acinetobacter baylyi (strain ATCC 33305 / BD413 / ADP1) (see paper)
GUDD_ACIAD / Q6FFQ2 Glucarate dehydratase; GDH; GlucD; EC 4.2.1.40 from Acinetobacter baylyi (strain ATCC 33305 / BD413 / ADP1) (see paper)
Q6FFQ2 glucarate dehydratase (EC 4.2.1.40) from Acinetobacter baylyi (see paper)
ACIAD0128 D-glucarate dehydratase from Acinetobacter sp. ADP1
58% identity, 16% coverage

3p0wB / B2UIZ1 Crystal structure of d-glucarate dehydratase from ralstonia solanacearum complexed with mg and d-glucarate
63% identity, 16% coverage

gudD / P42206 D-glucarate dehydratase subunit (EC 4.2.1.40) from Pseudomonas putida (see paper)
GUDD_PSEPU / P42206 Glucarate dehydratase; GDH; GlucD; EC 4.2.1.40 from Pseudomonas putida (Arthrobacter siderocapsulatus) (see paper)
68% identity, 14% coverage

3nxlC / Q39KL8 Crystal structure of glucarate dehydratase from burkholderia cepacia complexed with magnesium
59% identity, 16% coverage

3nfuA / Q1QUN0 Crystal structure of probable glucarate dehydratase from chromohalobacter salexigens dsm 3043 complexed with magnesium
45% identity, 15% 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