PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for 59 a.a. (RGHRFTKENV...)

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 25 similar proteins in the literature:

MTAL2_YEAST / P0CY08 Mating-type protein ALPHA2; MATalpha2 protein; Alpha-2 repressor from Saccharomyces cerevisiae (strain ATCC 204508 / S288c) (Baker's yeast) (see 10 papers)
NP_009866, YCL067C Hmlalpha2p from Saccharomyces cerevisiae
NP_009868 homeodomain mating type protein alpha2 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae S288C
YCR039C Homeobox-domain protein that, with Mcm1p, represses a-specific genes in haploids; acts with A1p to repress transcription of haploid-specific genes in diploids; one of two genes encoded by the MATalpha mating type cassette from Saccharomyces cerevisiae
100% identity, 28% coverage

MATA2_YEASX / P0CY12 Putative mating-type protein A2; MATa2 protein from Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Baker's yeast) (see paper)
YCR096C Hmra2p from Saccharomyces cerevisiae
100% identity, 50% coverage

1akhB / P0CY08 Mat a1/alpha2/DNA ternary complex (see paper)
100% identity, 76% coverage

1mnmC / P0CY08 Yeast matalpha2/mcm1/DNA ternary transcription complex crystal structure (see paper)
100% identity, 75% coverage

MTAL2_CANGA / Q86Z42 Mating-type-like protein ALPHA2; MTL1alpha2 protein from Candida glabrata (strain ATCC 2001 / BCRC 20586 / JCM 3761 / NBRC 0622 / NRRL Y-65 / CBS 138) (Yeast) (Nakaseomyces glabratus) (see paper)
63% identity, 32% coverage

KAFR_0D00720 homeodomain mating type protein alpha2 from Kazachstania africana CBS 2517
61% identity, 29% coverage

VDAG_07897 uncharacterized protein from Verticillium dahliae VdLs.17
44% identity, 7% coverage

TRIATDRAFT_288678 uncharacterized protein from Trichoderma atroviride
43% identity, 6% coverage

MTAL2_CANAL / Q9UW22 Mating-type-like protein ALPHA2; MTLalpha2 protein from Candida albicans (strain SC5314 / ATCC MYA-2876) (Yeast) (see 3 papers)
MTLALPHA2 / GB|AAD51408.1 mating-type-like protein ALPHA2 (MTLalpha2 protein) from Candida albicans (see 6 papers)
46% identity, 31% coverage

VDAG_04837 uncharacterized protein from Verticillium dahliae VdLs.17
40% identity, 7% coverage

FGSG_07909 hypothetical protein from Fusarium graminearum PH-1
48% identity, 7% coverage

G2WY50 quercetin 2,3-dioxygenase (EC 1.13.11.24) from Verticillium dahliae (see paper)
VDAG_02532 cupin domain-containing protein from Verticillium dahliae VdLs.17
37% identity, 5% coverage

FGSG_09043 hypothetical protein from Fusarium graminearum PH-1
41% identity, 11% coverage

TRIATDRAFT_161626 uncharacterized protein from Trichoderma atroviride
41% identity, 5% coverage

VDAG_00465 uncharacterized protein from Verticillium dahliae VdLs.17
39% identity, 5% coverage

SS1G_03098 hypothetical protein from Sclerotinia sclerotiorum 1980 UF-70
42% identity, 4% coverage

BC1G_06341 Bchox2 from Botrytis cinerea B05.10
40% identity, 4% coverage

Pc06g01320 uncharacterized protein from Penicillium rubens
39% identity, 7% coverage

AFUA_1G15550 homeobox and C2H2 transcription factor, putative from Aspergillus fumigatus Af293
39% identity, 6% coverage

NCU05257 homeobox and C2H2 transcription factor from Neurospora crassa OR74A
35% identity, 4% coverage

VDAG_04891 uncharacterized protein from Verticillium dahliae VdLs.17
38% identity, 7% coverage

VDAG_02889 uncharacterized protein from Verticillium dahliae VdLs.17
36% identity, 6% coverage

FOXG_07428 hypothetical protein from Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. lycopersici 4287
38% identity, 6% coverage

XP_001455625 uncharacterized protein from Paramecium tetraurelia
36% identity, 11% coverage

XP_644890 homeodomain containing protein from Dictyostelium discoideum AX4
40% identity, 8% 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