PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for 3NX2_MICMP / C0HJR2 (64 a.a., LTCKTCPFTT...)

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Find functional residues: SitesBLAST

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Predict protein localization: PSORTb

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Fitness BLAST: loading...

Found 62 similar proteins in the literature:

3NX2_MICMP / C0HJR2 Micrurotoxin 2; MmTX2 from Micrurus mipartitus (Red-tailed coral snake) (see paper)
100% identity, 100% coverage

3NX1_MICMP / C0HJR1 Micrurotoxin 1; MmTX1 from Micrurus mipartitus (Red-tailed coral snake) (see paper)
98% identity, 100% coverage

3NX4_MICSU / P86098 Long neurotoxin MS4 from Micrurus surinamensis (Surinam coral snake) (see paper)
78% identity, 100% coverage

3NX2_MICSU / P86096 Long neurotoxin MS2 from Micrurus surinamensis (Surinam coral snake) (see paper)
75% identity, 100% coverage

3NX5_MICFR / P86424 Frontoxin V; FTx V from Micrurus frontalis (Coral snake) (see paper)
73% identity, 100% coverage

3NX5_MICSU / P86099 Long neurotoxin MS5 from Micrurus surinamensis (Surinam coral snake) (see paper)
72% identity, 100% coverage

3NX4_MICFR / P86423 Frontoxin IV; FTx IV from Micrurus frontalis (Coral snake) (see paper)
70% identity, 100% coverage

3NO5I_BUNMU / Q9YGJ0 Gamma-bungarotoxin; Long neurotoxin homolog NTL2I from Bungarus multicinctus (Many-banded krait) (see 2 papers)
47% identity, 72% coverage

3SO61_HEMHA / P25676 Weak toxin CM-1c from Hemachatus haemachatus (Rinkhals) (Sepedon haemachatus)
52% identity, 100% coverage

Q9YGH9 Long neurotoxin homolog NTL2 from Bungarus multicinctus
46% identity, 71% coverage

3SO62_NAJHH / P01415 Weak toxin CM-2 from Naja haje haje (Egyptian cobra) (see paper)
52% identity, 100% coverage

3NO48_MICCO / P58370 Alpha-neurotoxin homolog 8; NXH8 from Micrurus corallinus (Brazilian coral snake) (see paper)
45% identity, 74% coverage

3NO4_BUNCA / P81783 Candoxin from Bungarus candidus (Malayan krait) (see paper)
42% identity, 74% coverage

3NO4H_BUNMU / P15818 Long neurotoxin homolog; BM10-1 from Bungarus multicinctus (Many-banded krait) (see paper)
42% identity, 74% coverage

3LKF_BUNFL / P15815 Kappa-flavitoxin; Kappa-ftx; Kappa-fvt; Long neurotoxin 2 from Bungarus flaviceps flaviceps (Red-headed krait) (see 3 papers)
45% identity, 92% coverage

Q9W729 Kappa-6-bungarotoxin from Bungarus multicinctus
45% identity, 70% coverage

3LK2_BUNMU / P15816 Kappa-2-bungarotoxin; Kappa-neurotoxin CB1 from Bungarus multicinctus (Many-banded krait) (see paper)
48% identity, 70% coverage

D5J9P5 Non-conventional three finger toxin isoform 1 from Bungarus flaviceps
41% identity, 73% coverage

3LKB_BUNMU / P01398 Kappa-bungarotoxin; Kappa-bgt; Kappa-1-bungarotoxin; Long neurotoxin 2; Neuronal bungarotoxin; nBgt; Toxin F from Bungarus multicinctus (Many-banded krait) (see 4 papers)
45% identity, 70% coverage

A8HDK9 Long neurotoxin 1 from Oxyuranus scutellatus scutellatus
42% identity, 55% coverage

Q8AY56 Kappa 1a-bungarotoxin from Bungarus candidus
45% identity, 70% coverage

Q8AY55 Kappa 1b-bungarotoxin from Bungarus candidus
45% identity, 70% coverage

A7X4R0 Long neurotoxin 3FTx-Oxy2 from Oxyuranus microlepidotus
42% identity, 55% coverage

3LK3_BUNMU / P15817 Kappa-3-bungarotoxin; K3Bgt; Kappa-neurotoxin; Long neurotoxin CR1 from Bungarus multicinctus (Many-banded krait) (see paper)
42% identity, 70% coverage

A8HDK7 Long neurotoxin 1 from Oxyuranus microlepidotus
40% identity, 55% coverage

O12962 Kappa-5-bungarotoxin from Bungarus multicinctus
43% identity, 70% coverage

A8HDK8 Long neurotoxin 2 from Oxyuranus microlepidotus
38% identity, 55% coverage

A7X4Q3 Long neurotoxin 3FTx-Oxy1 from Oxyuranus microlepidotus
38% identity, 55% coverage

R4FIT0 3FTx-Pse-93 from Pseudonaja modesta
38% identity, 64% coverage

Q2VBN0 Muscarinic toxin 38 from Ophiophagus hannah
39% identity, 74% coverage

R4G321 3FTx-Pse-99 from Pseudonaja modesta
36% identity, 62% coverage

R4FIU6 3FTx-Pse-23 from Pseudonaja modesta
41% identity, 55% coverage

3L21_PSETE / A8HDK6 Long neurotoxin 1; LNTX-1 from Pseudonaja textilis (Eastern brown snake) (see paper)
41% identity, 55% coverage

O57326 Alpha-neurotoxin NTX-3 from Naja sputatrix
38% identity, 77% coverage

3L2X1_OPHHA / Q2VBP8 Long neurotoxin LNTX1 from Ophiophagus hannah (King cobra) (Naja hannah) (see paper)
42% identity, 54% coverage

3L2P_PSETE / Q9W7J5 Pseudonajatoxin b homolog; Pt-bp from Pseudonaja textilis (Eastern brown snake) (see paper)
34% identity, 59% coverage

R4G7K3 3FTx-Pse-121 from Pseudonaja modesta
37% identity, 64% coverage

Q9YGJ5 Alpha-neurotoxin NTX-2 from Naja sputatrix
38% identity, 77% coverage

O57327 Alpha-neurotoxin NTX-4 from Naja sputatrix
38% identity, 77% coverage

Q9YGJ6 Alpha-neurotoxin NTX-1 from Naja sputatrix
38% identity, 77% coverage

3L24_OPHHA / P80156 Long neurotoxin 4; Alpha-neurotoxin from Ophiophagus hannah (King cobra) (Naja hannah) (see paper)
42% identity, 71% coverage

Q2VBP3 Long neurotoxin LNTX37 from Ophiophagus hannah
42% identity, 54% coverage

Q2VBP6 Long neurotoxin LNTX8 from Ophiophagus hannah
40% identity, 54% coverage

R4G319 3FTx-Pse-78 from Pseudonaja modesta
38% identity, 69% coverage

3S1CB_NAJAT / P60770 Cobrotoxin; CBT; CBTX; CTX; Atratoxin; Cobratide; Short neurotoxin 1 from Naja atra (Chinese cobra) (see 4 papers)
3S1CB_NAJKA / P60771 Cobrotoxin; CBT; Short neurotoxin I; NT1 from Naja kaouthia (Monocled cobra) (Naja siamensis) (see paper)
36% identity, 77% coverage

3SO91_BUNMU / Q9YGI0 Short neurotoxin homolog NTL1; BM10-2 from Bungarus multicinctus (Many-banded krait) (see 2 papers)
37% identity, 73% coverage

Q7ZT13 Neurotoxin-like protein pMD18-NTL1/2/4/5 from Bungarus multicinctus
37% identity, 73% coverage

D5J9P9 Non-conventional three finger toxin isoform 5 from Bungarus flaviceps
35% identity, 74% coverage

3S1CB_NAJNA / Q9PTT0 Cobrotoxin homolog; Short neurotoxin from Naja naja (Indian cobra) (see paper)
36% identity, 77% coverage

3L23_NAJME / P0DQQ1 Long neurotoxin Tx-NM2 from Naja melanoleuca (Forest cobra) (Black-lipped cobra) (see paper)
39% identity, 72% coverage

1v6pA / P60770 Crystal structure of cobrotoxin (see paper)
36% identity, 100% coverage

R4G2J4 3FTx-Pse-116 from Pseudonaja modesta
35% identity, 55% coverage

3L21_NAJME / P01383 Long neurotoxin 1; Neurotoxin 3.9.4 from Naja melanoleuca (Forest cobra) (Black-lipped cobra) (see paper)
39% identity, 73% coverage

3S13_NAJSP / Q9PSN6 Neurotoxin 3; Toxin 3 from Naja sputatrix (Malayan spitting cobra) (Naja naja sputatrix) (see paper)
36% identity, 100% coverage

3L21_NAJAC / P01389 Long neurotoxin 1; Toxin III from Naja anchietae (Anchieta's cobra) (Naja haje anchietae) (see paper)
38% identity, 71% coverage

3L2B_PSETE / P13495 Pseudonajatoxin b; Long neurotoxin B from Pseudonaja textilis (Eastern brown snake) (see paper)
35% identity, 86% coverage

Q53B56 Long neurotoxin OH-57 from Ophiophagus hannah
42% identity, 56% coverage

3S1B1_NAJKA / P14613 Short neurotoxin 1; Toxin C-6 from Naja kaouthia (Monocled cobra) (Naja siamensis) (see paper)
40% identity, 83% coverage

3S11A_OPHHA / P01412 Weak toxin DE-1 from Ophiophagus hannah (King cobra) (Naja hannah) (see paper)
41% identity, 61% coverage

3SO8_OPHHA / A8N286 Haditoxin; Muscarinic toxin-like protein 3 homolog; MTLP-3 homolog from Ophiophagus hannah (King cobra) (Naja hannah) (see paper)
38% identity, 65% coverage

A3FM53 Long neurotoxin 2 from Hydrophis hardwickii
38% identity, 66% coverage

3S11A_NAJAT / E2ITZ3 Alpha-elapitoxin-Na1a; Alpha-EPTX-Na1a; Three-finger toxin from Naja atra (Chinese cobra) (see paper)
40% identity, 64% 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