PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for TX73_004910 (83 a.a., MAEAATTDVK...)

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 30 similar proteins in the literature:

SMc00970 PUTATIVE EXODEOXYRIBONUCLEASE PROTEIN from Sinorhizobium meliloti 1021
57% identity, 100% coverage

CC2070 exodeoxyribonuclease small subunit from Caulobacter crescentus CB15
48% identity, 94% coverage

YPO3175 exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Yersinia pestis CO92
YPTB0941 exonuclease VII, small subunit from Yersinia pseudotuberculosis IP 32953
46% identity, 85% coverage

Q8Y7C3 Exodeoxyribonuclease 7 small subunit from Listeria monocytogenes serovar 1/2a (strain ATCC BAA-679 / EGD-e)
lmo1362 similar to exodeoxyribonuclease small subunit from Listeria monocytogenes EGD-e
49% identity, 73% coverage

B5Y0W9 Exodeoxyribonuclease 7 small subunit from Klebsiella pneumoniae (strain 342)
49% identity, 76% coverage

Cp258_0745 exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis 258
48% identity, 65% coverage

YajE / b0422 exodeoxyribonuclease VII subunit XseB (EC 3.1.11.6) from Escherichia coli K-12 substr. MG1655 (see 2 papers)
xseB / P0A8G9 exodeoxyribonuclease VII subunit XseB (EC 3.1.11.6) from Escherichia coli (strain K12) (see paper)
EX7S_ECOLI / P0A8G9 Exodeoxyribonuclease 7 small subunit; Exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit; ExoVII small subunit; Exonuclease VII small subunit; EC 3.1.11.6 from Escherichia coli (strain K12) (see 4 papers)
P0A8G9 exodeoxyribonuclease VII (subunit 1/2) (EC 3.1.11.6) from Escherichia coli (see 2 papers)
b0422 exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655
51% identity, 73% coverage

BH2782 exodeoxyribonuclease VII (small subunit) from Bacillus halodurans C-125
44% identity, 66% coverage

Q836W5 Exodeoxyribonuclease 7 small subunit from Enterococcus faecalis (strain ATCC 700802 / V583)
45% identity, 72% coverage

RT0339 exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Rickettsia typhi str. wilmington
48% identity, 67% coverage

C289_1857, F510_2204 exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Anoxybacillus gonensis
40% identity, 87% coverage

H375_2600 exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Rickettsia prowazekii str. Breinl
48% identity, 67% coverage

LIMLP_07750 exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Leptospira interrogans serovar Manilae
47% identity, 62% coverage

PA4042 exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
50% identity, 65% coverage

PP0529 exodeoxyribonuclease VII, small subunit from Pseudomonas putida KT2440
48% identity, 63% coverage

BPUM_2161 exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Bacillus pumilus SAFR-032
33% identity, 94% coverage

SAOUHSC_01619 exodeoxyribonuclease VII, small subunit from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus NCTC 8325
43% identity, 65% coverage

TM1769 exodeoxyribonuclease, small subunit from Thermotoga maritima MSB8
39% identity, 67% coverage

IV454_13465 exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Massilia antarctica
42% identity, 66% coverage

BC4178 Exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579
39% identity, 65% coverage

Bd0198 exodeoxyribonuclease VII, small subunit from Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus HD100
38% identity, 81% coverage

Krad_1121 exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Kineococcus radiotolerans SRS30216 = ATCC BAA-149
51% identity, 54% coverage

Rv1107c exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv
40% identity, 73% coverage

Bmul_4822 exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit from Burkholderia multivorans ATCC 17616
45% identity, 55% coverage

EX7S_HAEIN / P43914 Exodeoxyribonuclease 7 small subunit; Exodeoxyribonuclease VII small subunit; Exonuclease VII small subunit; EC 3.1.11.6 from Haemophilus influenzae (strain ATCC 51907 / DSM 11121 / KW20 / Rd) (see paper)
39% identity, 73% coverage

spr1088 Exodeoxyribonuclease small subunit from Streptococcus pneumoniae R6
39% identity, 69% coverage

P58001 Exodeoxyribonuclease 7 small subunit from Chlamydia trachomatis serovar D (strain ATCC VR-885 / DSM 19411 / UW-3/Cx)
35% identity, 72% coverage

LHK_02322 Ex7S from Laribacter hongkongensis HLHK9
35% identity, 83% coverage

SAK_0598 exodeoxyribonuclease VII, small subunit from Streptococcus agalactiae A909
39% identity, 67% coverage

NMB0262 exodeoxyribonuclease, small subunit from Neisseria meningitidis MC58
36% identity, 70% 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