PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for Pf1N1B4_1829 (83 a.a., MNNVAIAAID...)

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 18 similar proteins in the literature:

SA100 IS110-like element IS5075 family transposase from Escherichia coli
KPHS_p200210 transposase InsD1 for insertion sequence IS4321R from Klebsiella pneumoniae subsp. pneumoniae HS11286
58% identity, 23% coverage

Q93EZ2 IS1328 transposase from Shigella flexneri 2a
55% identity, 23% coverage

BCAM0771 putative transposase from Burkholderia cenocepacia J2315
55% identity, 22% coverage

PSPTO_2167 ISPsy7, transposase from Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato str. DC3000
48% identity, 22% coverage

VPA1254 putative IS1328 transposase from Vibrio parahaemolyticus RIMD 2210633
43% identity, 22% coverage

HW44_RS16715 IS110 family transposase from Nitrosococcus oceani
38% identity, 51% coverage

PA3434 probable transposase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
PA0445 probable transposase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
PA2319 probable transposase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
PA2690 probable transposase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
PA3993 probable transposase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
PA4797 probable transposase from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
42% identity, 22% coverage

HJ586_02470 IS110-like element ISEch3 family transposase from Dickeya zeae
42% identity, 22% coverage

Q7WWT0 IS110-like element IS884 family transposase from Cupriavidus necator (strain ATCC 17699 / DSM 428 / KCTC 22496 / NCIMB 10442 / H16 / Stanier 337)
40% identity, 22% coverage

PSPPH_A0132 ISPsy16, transposase from Pseudomonas syringae pv. phaseolicola 1448A
42% identity, 23% coverage

YE1870 putative transposase for IS1667 from Yersinia enterocolitica subsp. enterocolitica 8081
40% identity, 21% coverage

YE105_C3382 IS110-like element ISYen1 family transposase from Yersinia enterocolitica subsp. palearctica 105.5R(r)
40% identity, 22% coverage

YE3064 putative transposase for IS1667 from Yersinia enterocolitica subsp. enterocolitica 8081
YE1359 putative transposase for IS1667 from Yersinia enterocolitica subsp. enterocolitica 8081
40% identity, 22% coverage

CCNA_02826 transposase from Caulobacter crescentus NA1000
37% identity, 20% coverage

CC2740 IS1111A/IS1328/IS1533 family transposase from Caulobacter crescentus CB15
37% identity, 19% coverage

XNC1_3131 IS110 family transposase from Xenorhabdus nematophila ATCC 19061
34% identity, 20% coverage

CBU_1090 IS1111A transposase from Coxiella burnetii RSA 493
CBU_0040 IS1111A transposase from Coxiella burnetii RSA 493
CBU_1186 IS1111A transposase from Coxiella burnetii RSA 493
CBU_1217a transposase from Coxiella burnetii RSA 493
32% identity, 21% coverage

CBU_1076 IS1111A transposase from Coxiella burnetii RSA 493
32% identity, 21% 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