PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for mRNA_3004 (85 a.a., MASTILPLEL...)

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 46 similar proteins in the literature:

LSM5_ARATH / Q9FKB0 Sm-like protein LSM5; AtLSM5; Protein SUPERSENSITIVE TO ABA AND DROUGHT 1; AtSAD1; U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSM5 from Arabidopsis thaliana (Mouse-ear cress) (see 5 papers)
NP_199698 Small nuclear ribonucleoprotein family protein from Arabidopsis thaliana
AT5G48870 SAD1 (SUPERSENSITIVE TO ABA AND DROUGHT 1); RNA binding from Arabidopsis thaliana
70% identity, 92% coverage

LSM5_HUMAN / Q9Y4Y9 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm5 from Homo sapiens (Human) (see 3 papers)
P62322 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm5 from Mus musculus
NP_036454 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm5 isoform a from Homo sapiens
65% identity, 88% coverage

LOC106316876 sm-like protein LSM5 from Brassica oleracea var. oleracea
68% identity, 91% coverage

NP_648022 uncharacterized protein, isoform A from Drosophila melanogaster
64% identity, 84% coverage

LOC725641 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm5 from Apis mellifera
66% identity, 84% coverage

AFUA_7G04280 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein (LSM5), putative from Aspergillus fumigatus Af293
61% identity, 95% coverage

LSM5_SCHPO / O42978 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm5 from Schizosaccharomyces pombe (strain 972 / ATCC 24843) (Fission yeast) (see paper)
NP_596373 U6 snRNP-associated protein Lsm5 from Schizosaccharomyces pombe
62% identity, 96% coverage

FGSG_06819 hypothetical protein from Fusarium graminearum PH-1
58% identity, 92% coverage

3swnA / O42978 Structure of the lsm657 complex: an assembly intermediate of the lsm1 7 and lsm2 8 rings (see paper)
63% identity, 92% coverage

NP_001124182 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm5 isoform b from Homo sapiens
69% identity, 71% coverage

PF3D7_1443300 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm5, putative from Plasmodium falciparum 3D7
55% identity, 79% coverage

PY17X_1311000 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm5, putative from Plasmodium yoelii
55% identity, 79% coverage

PVX_118325 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm5, putative from Plasmodium vivax
55% identity, 79% coverage

LSM5_YEAST / P40089 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm5 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae (strain ATCC 204508 / S288c) (Baker's yeast) (see 10 papers)
NP_011073, YER146W Lsm (Like Sm) protein; part of heteroheptameric complexes (Lsm2p-7p and either Lsm1p or 8p): cytoplasmic Lsm1p complex involved in mRNA decay; nuclear Lsm8p complex part of U6 snRNP and possibly involved in processing tRNA, snoRNA, and rRNA from Saccharomyces cerevisiae
48% identity, 80% coverage

B1N3I3 Sm domain-containing protein from Entamoeba histolytica (strain ATCC 30459 / HM-1:IMSS / ABRM)
EHI_076840 uncharacterized protein from Entamoeba histolytica HM-1:IMSS
38% identity, 86% coverage

H3BKC5 LSM5 homolog, U6 small nuclear RNA and mRNA degradation associated (Fragment) from Mus musculus
57% identity, 44% coverage

PHS042 small nucleoprotein from Pyrococcus horikoshii OT3
35% identity, 84% coverage

1lojC / O26745 Crystal structure of a methanobacterial sm-like archaeal protein (smap1) bound to uridine-5'-monophosphate (ump) (see paper)
37% identity, 86% coverage

O29386 Putative snRNP Sm-like protein from Archaeoglobus fulgidus (strain ATCC 49558 / DSM 4304 / JCM 9628 / NBRC 100126 / VC-16)
AF0875 snRNP, putative from Archaeoglobus fulgidus DSM 4304
36% identity, 89% coverage

7abgj / P62304 pre-Bact-1 spliceosome (see paper)
32% identity, 81% coverage

RUXE_HUMAN / P62304 Small nuclear ribonucleoprotein E; snRNP-E; Sm protein E; Sm-E; SmE from Homo sapiens (Human) (see 21 papers)
P62305 Small nuclear ribonucleoprotein E from Mus musculus
NP_003085 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein E isoform 1 from Homo sapiens
32% identity, 75% coverage

D3ZSP1 Small nuclear ribonucleoprotein E from Rattus norvegicus
32% identity, 75% coverage

1m8vA / Q9V0Y8 Structure of pyrococcus abyssii sm protein in complex with a uridine heptamer (see paper)
34% identity, 84% coverage

Q9V0Y8 Putative snRNP Sm-like protein from Pyrococcus abyssi (strain GE5 / Orsay)
34% identity, 84% coverage

1i5lC / O29386 Crystal structure of an sm-like protein (af-sm1) from archaeoglobus fulgidus complexed with short poly-u RNA (see paper)
35% identity, 85% coverage

8xi2e / A8IYZ2 Cryo-em structure of the chlamydomonas c Complex (see paper)
34% identity, 81% coverage

TK0976 snRNP component, Sm-like protein from Thermococcus kodakaraensis KOD1
31% identity, 84% coverage

NP_001291393 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein E isoform 2 from Homo sapiens
34% identity, 68% coverage

PF1542 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein, putative from Pyrococcus furiosus DSM 3638
32% identity, 84% coverage

AT4G30330 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein E, putative / snRNP-E, putative / Sm protein E, putative from Arabidopsis thaliana
NP_567844 Small nuclear ribonucleoprotein family protein from Arabidopsis thaliana
32% identity, 80% coverage

NP_732931 uncharacterized protein from Drosophila melanogaster
Q8IMX8 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm3 from Drosophila melanogaster
47% identity, 48% coverage

RUXE_DROME / Q9VLV5 Probable small nuclear ribonucleoprotein E; snRNP-E; Sm protein E; Sm-E; SmE from Drosophila melanogaster (Fruit fly) (see paper)
NP_609162 small ribonucleoprotein particle protein SmE from Drosophila melanogaster
33% identity, 73% coverage

AT2G18740 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein E, putative / snRNP-E, putative / Sm protein E, putative from Arabidopsis thaliana
32% identity, 80% coverage

P57670 Putative snRNP Sm-like protein from Thermoplasma acidophilum (strain ATCC 25905 / DSM 1728 / JCM 9062 / NBRC 15155 / AMRC-C165)
27% identity, 92% coverage

MM2383 Small nuclear riboprotein-like protein from Methanosarcina mazei Goe1
38% identity, 86% coverage

E1ZJG0 Small nuclear ribonucleoprotein E from Chlorella variabilis
30% identity, 80% coverage

LSM3A_ARATH / Q9LMN4 Sm-like protein LSM3A; AtLSM3A; U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSM3A from Arabidopsis thaliana (Mouse-ear cress) (see 2 papers)
AT1G21190 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein, putative / snRNP, putative / Sm protein, putative from Arabidopsis thaliana
41% identity, 51% coverage

I3KZX4 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm3 from Oreochromis niloticus
31% identity, 70% coverage

NP_502579 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm3 from Caenorhabditis elegans
43% identity, 48% coverage

6qw663 / P62310 6qw663 (see paper)
31% identity, 84% coverage

LSM3_HUMAN / P62310 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm3 from Homo sapiens (Human) (see 4 papers)
NP_055278 U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSm3 from Homo sapiens
31% identity, 70% coverage

LSM3B_ARATH / Q9C6K5 Sm-like protein LSM3B; AtLSM3B; U6 snRNA-associated Sm-like protein LSM3B from Arabidopsis thaliana (Mouse-ear cress) (see 2 papers)
AT1G76860 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein, putative / snRNP, putative / Sm protein, putative from Arabidopsis thaliana
NP_177812 Small nuclear ribonucleoprotein family protein from Arabidopsis thaliana
39% identity, 50% coverage

6ppqF / Q9UUI1 Structure of s. Pombe lsm1-7 with RNA, polyuridine with 3' adenosine (see paper)
30% identity, 81% coverage

NP_594380 U6 snRNP-associated protein Lsm6 from Schizosaccharomyces pombe
30% identity, 81% coverage

PAAG_00101 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein from Paracoccidioides lutzii Pb01
34% identity, 64% coverage

4wzjMM / P62306 4wzjMM (see paper)
34% identity, 100% 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