PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for 64 a.a. (MASRNKLVVP...)

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:

P04833 Small, acid-soluble spore protein D from Bacillus subtilis (strain 168)
100% identity, 100% coverage

BMMGA3_03940 alpha/beta-type small acid-soluble spore protein from Bacillus methanolicus MGA3
74% identity, 85% coverage

BC4646 Small acid-soluble spore protein from Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579
P0A4F4 Small, acid-soluble spore protein 2 from Bacillus cereus (strain ATCC 14579 / DSM 31 / CCUG 7414 / JCM 2152 / NBRC 15305 / NCIMB 9373 / NCTC 2599 / NRRL B-3711)
P0A4F5 Small, acid-soluble spore protein 2 from Bacillus cereus
69% identity, 95% coverage

BAS4544 small, acid-soluble spore protein B from Bacillus anthracis str. Sterne
BA4898 small, acid-soluble spore protein B from Bacillus anthracis str. Ames
69% identity, 95% coverage

NP_388856 small acid-soluble spore protein (beta-type SASP) from Bacillus subtilis subsp. subtilis str. 168
69% identity, 88% coverage

YP_001374031 small acid-soluble spore protein alpha/beta type from Bacillus cereus subsp. cytotoxis NVH 391-98
66% identity, 93% coverage

SAS1_BACIU / P84583 Small, acid-soluble spore protein 1; SASP-1 from Bacillus subtilis (see paper)
66% identity, 84% coverage

YP_001643650 small acid-soluble spore protein alpha/beta type from Bacillus weihenstephanensis KBAB4
63% identity, 94% coverage

W8YUH6 Small, acid-soluble spore protein 1 from Bacillus thuringiensis DB27
Q73CW6 Small acid-soluble spore protein from Bacillus cereus (strain ATCC 10987 / NRS 248)
BA0858 small acid-soluble spore protein from Bacillus anthracis str. Ames
BC0875 Small acid-soluble spore protein from Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579
BAS0815 small acid-soluble spore protein from Bacillus anthracis str. Sterne
65% identity, 93% coverage

SAS2_BACIU / P84584 Small, acid-soluble spore protein 2; SASP-2 from Bacillus subtilis (see paper)
64% identity, 83% coverage

NP_390835 small acid-soluble spore protein (alpha-type SASP) from Bacillus subtilis subsp. subtilis str. 168
P04831 Small, acid-soluble spore protein A from Bacillus subtilis (strain 168)
BSU29570 small acid-soluble spore protein (alpha-type SASP) from Bacillus subtilis subsp. subtilis str. 168
69% identity, 80% coverage

BCAH187_A3151 small, acid-soluble spore protein, alpha/beta family from Bacillus cereus AH187
BA3127 small, acid-soluble spore protein, alpha/beta family from Bacillus anthracis str. Ames
70% identity, 80% coverage

BC1984 Small acid-soluble spore protein from Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579
BAS1844 Small, acid-soluble spore protein, alpha/beta family from Bacillus anthracis str. Sterne
65% identity, 81% coverage

GBAA1987 Small, acid-soluble spore protein, alpha/beta family from Bacillus anthracis str. 'Ames Ancestor'
BA1987 Small, acid-soluble spore protein, alpha/beta family from Bacillus anthracis str. Ames
AW20_817, BC_1984 alpha/beta-type small acid-soluble spore protein from Bacillus cereus ATCC 14579
65% identity, 84% coverage

YP_001374814 small acid-soluble spore protein alpha/beta type from Bacillus cereus subsp. cytotoxis NVH 391-98
63% identity, 84% coverage

BSU19950 small acid-soluble spore protein (alpha/beta-type SASP); SPbeta phage protein from Bacillus subtilis subsp. subtilis str. 168
NP_389876 small acid-soluble spore protein (alpha/beta-type SASP); SPbeta phage protein from Bacillus subtilis subsp. subtilis str. 168
58% identity, 79% coverage

2z3xA / P02958 Structure of a protein-DNA complex essential for DNA protection in spore of bacillus species (see paper)
63% identity, 80% coverage

C174_05773 alpha/beta-type small acid-soluble spore protein from Bacillus mycoides FSL H7-687
47% identity, 79% coverage

CA_C2365 alpha/beta-type small acid-soluble spore protein from Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824
CAC2365 Small acid-soluble spore protein from Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824
49% identity, 85% coverage

CDR20291_2576 alpha/beta-type small acid-soluble spore protein from Clostridioides difficile R20291
CD2688 small acid-soluble spore protein A from Clostridium difficile 630
CDR20291_2576 small acid-soluble spore protein A from Clostridium difficile R20291
48% identity, 84% coverage

CD3249 small acid-soluble spore protein B from Clostridium difficile 630
CDR20291_3107 small acid-soluble spore protein B from Clostridium difficile R20291
45% identity, 84% coverage

CDR20291_3107 alpha/beta-type small acid-soluble spore protein from Clostridioides difficile R20291
45% identity, 91% coverage

Cbei_2471 small acid-soluble spore protein, alpha/beta type from Clostridium beijerincki NCIMB 8052
44% identity, 92% coverage

CLAU_0265 alpha/beta-type small acid-soluble spore protein from Clostridium autoethanogenum DSM 10061
42% identity, 83% coverage

CBO3048 small acid-soluble spore protein from Clostridium botulinum A str. ATCC 3502
45% identity, 88% coverage

DESHY_RS06920 alpha/beta-type small acid-soluble spore protein from Desulforamulus hydrothermalis Lam5 = DSM 18033
46% identity, 69% coverage

CPF_2417 small, acid-soluble spore protein 1 from Clostridium perfringens ATCC 13124
45% identity, 86% coverage

CEA_G1634 alpha/beta-type small acid-soluble spore protein from Clostridium acetobutylicum EA 2018
CAC1620 Small acid-soluble spore protein from Clostridium acetobutylicum ATCC 824
37% identity, 92% coverage

CBO1789 small, acid-soluble spore protein alpha from Clostridium botulinum A str. ATCC 3502
43% identity, 82% coverage

sspC2 / GI|144919 small, acid-soluble spore protein C2 from Clostridium perfringens (see 3 papers)
sspC2 / AAA62758.1 acid-soluble spore protein C2 from Clostridium perfringens (see paper)
CPE1423 small acid-soluble spore protein C2 from Clostridium perfringens str. 13
42% identity, 81% 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