PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for 62 a.a. (SDEYKIRRER...)

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 54 similar proteins in the literature:

XP_004014932 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta from Ovis aries
100% identity, 18% coverage

XP_003467861 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta from Cavia porcellus
100% identity, 18% coverage

NP_001186818 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta from Sus scrofa
100% identity, 18% coverage

XP_015004272 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta from Macaca mulatta
100% identity, 18% coverage

CEBPB_HUMAN / P17676 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta; C/EBP beta; Liver activator protein; LAP; Liver-enriched inhibitory protein; LIP; Nuclear factor NF-IL6; Transcription factor 5; TCF-5 from Homo sapiens (Human) (see 13 papers)
NP_005185 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta isoform a from Homo sapiens
100% identity, 18% coverage

XP_021139454 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta from Columba livia
98% identity, 19% coverage

CEBPB_CHICK / Q05826 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta; C/EBP beta; Transcription factor NF-M; CCR protein from Gallus gallus (Chicken) (see 3 papers)
NP_990584 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta from Gallus gallus
98% identity, 19% coverage

NP_001274667 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta isoform b from Mus musculus
98% identity, 23% coverage

CEBPB_MOUSE / P28033 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta; C/EBP beta; AGP/EBP; Interleukin-6-dependent-binding protein; IL-6DBP; Liver-enriched transcriptional activator; LAP from Mus musculus (Mouse) (see 28 papers)
98% identity, 21% coverage

CEBPB_RAT / P21272 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta; C/EBP beta; C/EBP-related protein 2; Interleukin-6-dependent-binding protein; IL-6DBP; Liver-enriched inhibitory protein; LIP; Liver-enriched transcriptional activator; LAP; Silencer factor B; SF-B from Rattus norvegicus (Rat) (see 6 papers)
NP_077039 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta isoform LAP1 from Rattus norvegicus
98% identity, 21% coverage

Q9BSC0 CEBPB protein (Fragment) from Homo sapiens
100% identity, 45% coverage

1h88B / P17676 Crystal structure of ternary protein-DNA complex1 (see paper)
100% identity, 87% coverage

O02755 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta from Bos taurus
NP_789745 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta from Bos taurus
97% identity, 18% coverage

NP_571959 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein beta from Danio rerio
87% identity, 22% coverage

Q99557 NF-IL6 (Fragment) from Homo sapiens
100% identity, 62% coverage

NP_001117919 CCAAT enhancer binding protein beta from Oncorhynchus mykiss
85% identity, 21% coverage

Q6P3S4 CEBPA protein from Homo sapiens
76% identity, 44% coverage

XP_003127063 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha from Sus scrofa
76% identity, 18% coverage

NP_001026630 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha from Gallus gallus
77% identity, 19% coverage

NP_001165967 CCAAT/enhancer binding protein alpha from Oncorhynchus mykiss
73% identity, 19% coverage

XP_064884492 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha from Columba livia
76% identity, 19% coverage

NP_001080275 CCAAT enhancer binding protein alpha L homeolog from Xenopus laevis
73% identity, 20% coverage

CEBPA_RAT / P05554 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha; C/EBP alpha from Rattus norvegicus (Rat) (see 8 papers)
76% identity, 17% coverage

CEBPA_HUMAN / P49715 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha; C/EBP alpha from Homo sapiens (Human) (see 13 papers)
NP_004355 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha isoform a from Homo sapiens
76% identity, 17% coverage

NP_001274506 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha isoform c from Rattus norvegicus
76% identity, 16% coverage

NP_571960 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha from Danio rerio
73% identity, 22% coverage

CEBPE_HUMAN / Q15744 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein epsilon; C/EBP epsilon from Homo sapiens (Human) (see 9 papers)
NP_001796 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein epsilon from Homo sapiens
76% identity, 22% coverage

CEBPA_MOUSE / P53566 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha; C/EBP alpha from Mus musculus (Mouse) (see 17 papers)
NP_031704 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha isoform a from Mus musculus
76% identity, 17% coverage

XP_016888138 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha from Cynoglossus semilaevis
70% identity, 19% coverage

8k8cA / P49715 Crystal structure of c/ebpalpha bzip domain bound to a high affinity DNA (see paper)
79% identity, 94% coverage

NP_789741 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein alpha from Bos taurus
76% identity, 18% coverage

CEBPD_HUMAN / P49716 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein delta; C/EBP delta; Nuclear factor NF-IL6-beta; NF-IL6-beta from Homo sapiens (Human) (see paper)
NP_005186 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein delta from Homo sapiens
68% identity, 23% coverage

CEBPD_RAT / Q03484 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein delta; C/EBP delta; Transcription factor CELF from Rattus norvegicus (Rat) (see paper)
NP_037286 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein delta from Rattus norvegicus
68% identity, 23% coverage

CEBPE_RAT / P56261 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein epsilon; C/EBP epsilon; C/EBP-related protein 1 from Rattus norvegicus (Rat) (see paper)
73% identity, 22% coverage

NP_997014 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein epsilon from Mus musculus
73% identity, 22% coverage

CEBPD_MOUSE / Q00322 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein delta; C/EBP delta; C/EBP-related protein 3 from Mus musculus (Mouse) (see 3 papers)
NP_031705 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein delta from Mus musculus
68% identity, 23% coverage

CEBPD_SHEEP / Q9N0J3 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein delta; C/EBP delta from Ovis aries (Sheep) (see paper)
69% identity, 24% coverage

XP_027828734 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein delta from Ovis aries
69% identity, 24% coverage

NP_776692 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein delta from Bos taurus
70% identity, 23% coverage

NP_001083076 CCAAT/enhancer binding protein delta L homeolog from Xenopus laevis
68% identity, 22% coverage

B9ENT4 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein from Salmo salar
65% identity, 20% coverage

CEBPG_MOUSE / P53568 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein gamma; C/EBP gamma; Granulocyte colony-stimulating factor promoter element 1-binding protein; GPE1-BP; GPE1-binding protein; Immunoglobulin enhancer-binding protein 1; IG/EBP-1 from Mus musculus (Mouse) (see 3 papers)
NP_034014 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein gamma from Mus musculus
54% identity, 41% coverage

CEBPG_HUMAN / P53567 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein gamma; C/EBP gamma from Homo sapiens (Human) (see paper)
NP_001797 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein gamma from Homo sapiens
54% identity, 41% coverage

CEBPG_RAT / P26801 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein gamma; C/EBP gamma from Rattus norvegicus (Rat) (see paper)
54% identity, 41% coverage

LOC105668437 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein from Linepithema humile
61% identity, 18% coverage

LOC105661976 LOW QUALITY PROTEIN: CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein-like from Megachile rotundata
61% identity, 24% coverage

NP_571912 CCAAT/enhancer binding protein (C/EBP) 1 from Danio rerio
54% identity, 36% coverage

WP_062270874 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein from Endozoicomonas arenosclerae
45% identity, 27% coverage

CEBP2_CAEEL / Q8IG69 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein homolog 2 from Caenorhabditis elegans (see 4 papers)
NP_871835 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein homolog 2 from Caenorhabditis elegans
48% identity, 60% coverage

NP_001037102 ovary C/EBPg transcription factor from Bombyx mori
52% identity, 53% coverage

NP_001037374 chorion specific C/EBP from Bombyx mori
54% identity, 22% coverage

LOC105380784 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein from Plutella xylostella
52% identity, 22% coverage

LOC100122625 uncharacterized protein LOC100122625 from Nasonia vitripennis
41% identity, 11% coverage

LOC101898926 CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein from Musca domestica
44% identity, 14% 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