PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for 96 a.a. (MLTGKQKRFL...)

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:

SAV1595 hypothetical protein from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus Mu50
SA1423 hypothetical protein from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus N315
68% identity, 100% coverage

SAPIG1660 ribosome assembly RNA-binding protein YhbY from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus ST398
67% identity, 100% coverage

SAR1672 conserved hypothetical protein from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus MRSA252
67% identity, 100% coverage

SAOUHSC_01698 hypothetical protein from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus NCTC 8325
66% identity, 100% coverage

lmo1489 similar to unknown proteins from Listeria monocytogenes EGD-e
LMRG_00942 conserved hypothetical protein from Listeria monocytogenes 10403S
61% identity, 100% coverage

UC7_RS16265 ribosome assembly RNA-binding protein YhbY from Enterococcus caccae ATCC BAA-1240
61% identity, 87% coverage

C4N14_06085 ribosome assembly RNA-binding protein YhbY from Fusobacterium nucleatum subsp. nucleatum ATCC 23726
45% identity, 95% coverage

HSISS4_01531 ribosome assembly RNA-binding protein YhbY from Streptococcus salivarius
50% identity, 88% coverage

SP_1748 hypothetical protein from Streptococcus pneumoniae TIGR4
SPD_1558 conserved hypothetical protein TIGR00253 from Streptococcus pneumoniae D39
49% identity, 89% coverage

BIF_01751 ribosome assembly RNA-binding protein YhbY from Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis BB-12
46% identity, 88% coverage

A4XJT0 CRM domain-containing protein from Caldicellulosiruptor saccharolyticus (strain ATCC 43494 / DSM 8903 / Tp8T 6331)
40% identity, 99% coverage

E2P69_RS07135 ribosome assembly RNA-binding protein YhbY from Xanthomonas perforans
41% identity, 95% coverage

P71376 RNA-binding protein HI_1333 from Haemophilus influenzae (strain ATCC 51907 / DSM 11121 / KW20 / Rd)
HI1333 conserved hypothetical protein from Haemophilus influenzae Rd KW20
42% identity, 96% coverage

SO1195 conserved hypothetical protein TIGR00253 from Shewanella oneidensis MR-1
41% identity, 96% coverage

YhbY / b3180 ribosome assembly factor YhbY from Escherichia coli K-12 substr. MG1655 (see 9 papers)
YHBY_ECOLI / P0AGK4 RNA-binding protein YhbY from Escherichia coli (strain K12) (see 2 papers)
yhbY RNA-binding protein YhbY from Escherichia coli K12 (see paper)
EDL933_RS21645 ribosome assembly RNA-binding protein YhbY from Escherichia coli O157:H7 str. EDL933
b3180 predicted RNA-binding protein from Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655
41% identity, 98% coverage

NJ56_03835 ribosome assembly RNA-binding protein YhbY from Yersinia ruckeri
41% identity, 98% coverage

T_RS16300 ribosome assembly RNA-binding protein YhbY from Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhi str. Ty2
40% identity, 98% coverage

t3215 conserved hypothetical protein from Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhi Ty2
40% identity, 86% coverage

Q9K026 CRM domain-containing protein from Neisseria meningitidis serogroup B (strain ATCC BAA-335 / MC58)
40% identity, 83% coverage

FTN_0552 RNA-binding protein from Francisella tularensis subsp. novicida U112
37% identity, 93% coverage

P95453 Probable RNA-binding protein PA4753 from Pseudomonas aeruginosa (strain ATCC 15692 / DSM 22644 / CIP 104116 / JCM 14847 / LMG 12228 / 1C / PRS 101 / PAO1)
PA14_62880 putative RNA-binding protein from Pseudomonas aeruginosa UCBPP-PA14
PA4753 hypothetical protein from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
35% identity, 88% coverage

AT2G21350 RNA binding from Arabidopsis thaliana
37% identity, 39% coverage

MMP0155 conserved hypothetical protein from Methanococcus maripaludis S2
31% identity, 66% coverage

BP1079 conserved hypothetical protein from Bordetella pertussis Tohama I
32% identity, 42% coverage

AT4G39040 RNA binding from Arabidopsis thaliana
35% identity, 29% coverage

NP_849521 RNA-binding CRS1 / YhbY (CRM) domain protein from Arabidopsis thaliana
35% identity, 31% coverage

PFLU_5262 YhbY family RNA-binding protein from Pseudomonas [fluorescens] SBW25
35% identity, 90% coverage

C0J56_04495 YhbY family RNA-binding protein from Pseudomonas fluorescens
34% identity, 90% coverage

RSc1524 HYPOTHETICAL PROTEIN from Ralstonia solanacearum GMI1000
29% identity, 57% coverage

CAF1P_MAIZE / Q84N49 CRS2-associated factor 1, chloroplastic; Chloroplastic group IIA intron splicing facilitator CRS2-associated factor 1 from Zea mays (Maize) (see 2 papers)
40% identity, 7% 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