PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for BRENDA::Q6GH41 (61 a.a., MPIVNVKLLE...)

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 27 similar proteins in the literature:

NWMN_1275 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus str. Newman
SAS044 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus N315
SAR1376 putative 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus MRSA252
100% identity, 98% coverage

Q6GH41 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase (EC 5.3.2.6) from Staphylococcus aureus (see paper)
SAUSA300_1258 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase from Staphylococcus aureus subsp. aureus USA300_FPR3757
P99132 Probable tautomerase SA1195.1 from Staphylococcus aureus (strain N315)
100% identity, 100% coverage

A0A133Q308 Tautomerase from Staphylococcus lugdunensis
EQ812_07575 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase from Staphylococcus lugdunensis
85% identity, 100% coverage

SE1045 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase from Staphylococcus epidermidis ATCC 12228
82% identity, 95% coverage

Q8CPB7 Probable tautomerase SE_1045 from Staphylococcus epidermidis (strain ATCC 12228 / FDA PCI 1200)
82% identity, 100% coverage

BAGQ_3790 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase from Bacillus velezensis
62% identity, 97% coverage

ywhB / P70994 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase homolog (EC 5.3.2.1) from Bacillus subtilis (strain 168) (see 5 papers)
4OT_BACSU / P70994 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase; (2Z,4E)-2-hydroxyhexa-2,4-dienedioate keto-enol isomerase; 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase; 4-OT; EC 5.3.2.6 from Bacillus subtilis (strain 168) (see paper)
62% identity, 97% coverage

lp_1712 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase from Lactobacillus plantarum WCFS1
61% identity, 95% coverage

2opaA / P70994 Ywhb binary complex with 2-fluoro-p-hydroxycinnamate
61% identity, 97% coverage

BP9_01400 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase from Bacillus paralicheniformis
60% identity, 98% coverage

Q71WL5 Probable tautomerase LMOf2365_2536 from Listeria monocytogenes serotype 4b (strain F2365)
58% identity, 98% coverage

EF2859 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase, putative from Enterococcus faecalis V583
47% identity, 95% coverage

praC / C4TP07 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase (EC 5.3.2.6) from Paenibacillus sp. JJ-1b (see paper)
C4TP07 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase (EC 5.3.2.6) from Paenibacillus sp. (see paper)
praC / BAH79105.1 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase from Paenibacillus sp. JJ-1b (see paper)
41% identity, 97% coverage

xylH / Q01468 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase subunit (EC 5.3.2.6) from Pseudomonas putida (see 4 papers)
4OT1_PSEPU / Q01468 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase; 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase; 4-OT; EC 5.3.2.6 from Pseudomonas putida (Arthrobacter siderocapsulatus) (see 2 papers)
Q01468 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase (EC 5.3.2.6) from Pseudomonas putida (see 3 papers)
xylH / AAA25694.1 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase from Pseudomonas putida (see paper)
42% identity, 87% coverage

nahJ / BAE92174.1 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase NahJ from Pseudomonas putida (see 2 papers)
44% identity, 87% coverage

1bjpA / Q01468 Crystal structure of 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase inactivated by 2- oxo-3-pentynoate at 2.4 angstroms resolution (see paper)
41% identity, 87% coverage

cnbG / Q38M36 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase (EC 5.3.2.6) from Comamonas testosteroni CNB-1 (see paper)
40% identity, 95% coverage

P67531 Probable tautomerase spr0921 from Streptococcus pneumoniae (strain ATCC BAA-255 / R6)
P67530 Probable tautomerase SP_1017 from Streptococcus pneumoniae serotype 4 (strain ATCC BAA-334 / TIGR4)
SM12261_RS05070 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase from Streptococcus mitis NCTC 12261
47% identity, 90% coverage

C3KFP9 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase from Pseudomonas fluorescens
40% identity, 87% coverage

Rmet_1317 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase family enzyme from Ralstonia metallidurans CH34
KZ686_10015, Rmet_1317 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase from Cupriavidus cauae
40% identity, 87% coverage

P49172 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase (EC 5.3.2.6) from Pseudomonas sp. (see paper)
dmpI / CAA43229.1 4-oxalocrotonate from Pseudomonas sp. CF600 (see paper)
38% identity, 87% coverage

NSU_pLA1132 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase from Novosphingobium pentaromativorans US6-1
36% identity, 79% coverage

J2M343 Tautomerase from Herbaspirillum sp. CF444
38% identity, 76% coverage

A2SL37 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase (EC 5.3.2.6) from Methylibium petroleiphilum (see paper)
40% identity, 77% coverage

Reut_B5693 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase from Ralstonia eutropha JMP134
32% identity, 95% coverage

HPB8_625 2-hydroxymuconate tautomerase family protein from Helicobacter pylori B8
D7FDC5 Tautomerase from Helicobacter pylori (strain B8)
HP0924 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase (dmpI) from Helicobacter pylori 26695
36% identity, 81% coverage

jhp0858 putative from Helicobacter pylori J99
36% 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 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