PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for PS417_07145 (79 a.a., MTDAVAFDAE...)

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 38 similar proteins in the literature:

PSPTO_3957 conserved hypothetical protein from Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato str. DC3000
WP_011104802 sulfurtransferase TusA family protein from Pseudomonas syringae pv. persicae
84% identity, 95% coverage

PP1233, PP_1233 conserved hypothetical protein from Pseudomonas putida KT2440
82% identity, 100% coverage

WP_004375233 sulfurtransferase TusA family protein from Pseudomonas sp. LSJ-87
82% identity, 100% coverage

PA1006 hypothetical protein from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
80% identity, 94% coverage

tusA / D3RPC0 TusA sulfur-carrier protein from Allochromatium vinosum (strain ATCC 17899 / DSM 180 / NBRC 103801 / NCIMB 10441 / D) (see 2 papers)
TUSA_ALLVD / D3RPC0 Sulfur carrier protein TusA from Allochromatium vinosum (strain ATCC 17899 / DSM 180 / NBRC 103801 / NCIMB 10441 / D) (Chromatium vinosum) (see 2 papers)
Alvin_2600 SirA family protein from Allochromatium vinosum DSM 180
53% identity, 92% coverage

WP_038092630 sulfurtransferase TusA family protein from Acidihalobacter prosperus
49% identity, 91% coverage

TK90_0631 SirA family protein from Thioalkalivibrio sp. K90mix
49% identity, 92% coverage

AFE_2557 sulfurtransferase TusA family protein from Acidithiobacillus ferrooxidans ATCC 23270
51% identity, 91% coverage

Hden_0698 sulfurtransferase TusA family protein from Hyphomicrobium denitrificans ATCC 51888
47% identity, 89% coverage

PA1564 hypothetical protein from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
47% identity, 99% coverage

Acaty_c2197 sulfurtransferase TusA family protein from Acidithiobacillus caldus ATCC 51756
48% identity, 95% coverage

Pnuc_1718 SirA family protein from Polynucleobacter sp. QLW-P1DMWA-1
44% identity, 96% coverage

LGS26_02870 sulfurtransferase TusA family protein from Dissulfurimicrobium hydrothermale
41% identity, 89% coverage

MHY1_00072 sulfurtransferase TusA family protein from Methylovirgula sp. HY1
44% identity, 89% coverage

BSU26500 hypothetical protein from Bacillus subtilis subsp. subtilis str. 168
40% identity, 91% coverage

GF1_30700 sulfurtransferase TusA family protein from Desulfolithobacter dissulfuricans
40% identity, 91% coverage

Dsui_0002 sulfurtransferase TusA family protein from Azospira oryzae PS
44% identity, 90% coverage

BC0795 Molybdopterin biosynthesis MoeB protein from Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579
39% identity, 87% coverage

BAS0740 conserved hypothetical protein from Bacillus anthracis str. Sterne
38% identity, 87% coverage

BAS0738 rhodanese domain protein from Bacillus anthracis str. Sterne
37% identity, 41% coverage

BSU26530 putative rhodanese-related sulfur transferase from Bacillus subtilis subsp. subtilis str. 168
43% identity, 37% coverage

NT01EI_0022 hypothetical protein from Edwardsiella ictaluri 93-146
40% identity, 96% coverage

PG0174 pyridine nucleotide-disulphide oxidoreductase family protein from Porphyromonas gingivalis W83
38% identity, 7% coverage

PGN_0285 pyridine nucleotide-disulphide oxidoreductase from Porphyromonas gingivalis ATCC 33277
38% identity, 8% coverage

YP_3227 cell developmental protein SirA from Yersinia pestis biovar Medievalis str. 91001
36% identity, 94% coverage

LGS26_05795 sulfurtransferase TusA family protein from Dissulfurimicrobium hydrothermale
34% identity, 86% coverage

tusA / P0A890 sulfur transfer protein TusA from Escherichia coli (strain K12) (see 12 papers)
TUSA_ECOLI / P0A890 Sulfur carrier protein TusA; Sulfur mediator TusA; Sulfur transfer protein TusA; tRNA 2-thiouridine synthesizing protein A from Escherichia coli (strain K12) (see 4 papers)
TUSA_ECO57 / P0A892 Sulfur carrier protein TusA; Sulfur mediator TusA; Sulfur transfer protein TusA; tRNA 2-thiouridine synthesizing protein A from Escherichia coli O157:H7 (see paper)
tusA sulfurtransferase TusA; EC 2.8.1; EC 2.8.1.- from Escherichia coli K12 (see 7 papers)
B21_RS17320 sulfurtransferase TusA from Escherichia coli BL21(DE3)
NP_417927 sulfur transfer protein TusA from Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655
UTI89_C3986 possible RNA-binding protein required for wild-type FtsZ ring formation on rich media from Escherichia coli UTI89
b3470 cell developmental protein SirA from Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655
35% identity, 98% coverage

Mcup_0683 sulfurtransferase TusA family protein from Metallosphaera cuprina Ar-4
29% identity, 99% coverage

M9U7N8 Putative redox protein, regulator of disulfidebond formation from Sulfolobus islandicus LAL14/1
28% identity, 98% coverage

L21SP2_0797 FAD-dependent oxidoreductase from Salinispira pacifica
33% identity, 7% coverage

BT_2434 pyridine nucleotide-disulphide oxidoreductase from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron VPI-5482
38% identity, 7% coverage

SA0044 hypothetical protein from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus N315
SERP2515 rhodanese-like domain protein from Staphylococcus epidermidis RP62A
32% identity, 19% coverage

CS401_RS08470 CoA-disulfide reductase from Fusobacterium vincentii
35% identity, 9% coverage

ABUW_3504 sulfurtransferase TusA from Acinetobacter baumannii
29% identity, 91% coverage

BF638R_0572 FAD-dependent oxidoreductase from Bacteroides fragilis 638R
33% identity, 7% coverage

SERP2434 rhodanese-like domain protein from Staphylococcus epidermidis RP62A
32% identity, 18% coverage

SE0130 conserved hypothetical protein from Staphylococcus epidermidis ATCC 12228
32% identity, 24% coverage

AWC34_RS01880 persulfide response sulfurtransferase CstA from Staphylococcus equorum
32% identity, 17% 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