PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for VIMSS757130 Hypothetical protein (289 a.a., MYSNHSIDQA...)

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 51 similar proteins in the literature:

lpg0667 Hypothetical protein from Legionella pneumophila subsp. pneumophila str. Philadelphia 1
100% identity, 100% coverage

LPP_RS03635 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Legionella pneumophila str. Paris
97% identity, 100% coverage

LPL_RS03550 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Legionella pneumophila str. Lens
95% identity, 100% coverage

LPA_RS03760, LPC_RS03800 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Legionella pneumophila 2300/99 Alcoy
96% identity, 100% coverage

lpg2254 Hypothetical protein from Legionella pneumophila subsp. pneumophila str. Philadelphia 1
40% identity, 92% coverage

LPP_RS11160 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Legionella pneumophila str. Paris
40% identity, 93% coverage

LPA_RS11590, LPC_RS11790 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Legionella pneumophila str. Corby
39% identity, 96% coverage

LPL_RS11005 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Legionella pneumophila str. Lens
39% identity, 95% coverage

HWN72_21935 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Novosphingobium sp. HR1a
37% identity, 92% coverage

CC2906 conserved hypothetical protein from Caulobacter crescentus CB15
CCNA_03000 hypothetical protein from Caulobacter crescentus NA1000
40% identity, 84% coverage

Y3000_CAUVN / A0A0H3CC29 UPF0276 protein CCNA_03000 from Caulobacter vibrioides (strain NA1000 / CB15N) (Caulobacter crescentus) (see paper)
40% identity, 84% coverage

lpg2107 Hypothetical protein from Legionella pneumophila subsp. pneumophila str. Philadelphia 1
37% identity, 89% coverage

SMb20529 CONSERVED HYPOTHETICAL PROTEIN from Sinorhizobium meliloti 1021
37% identity, 87% coverage

ELZ14_06450 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Pseudomonas brassicacearum
36% identity, 93% coverage

BPSL1691 conserved hypothetical protein from Burkholderia pseudomallei K96243
36% identity, 86% coverage

Y3364_CAUVN / A0A0H3CEP9 UPF0276 protein CCNA_03364 from Caulobacter vibrioides (strain NA1000 / CB15N) (Caulobacter crescentus) (see paper)
CC3255 conserved hypothetical protein from Caulobacter crescentus CB15
CCNA_03364 hypothetical protein from Caulobacter crescentus NA1000
34% identity, 90% coverage

PGA1_c21010 component of stress sensing system, with PGA1_c21020 (DUF2063) from Phaeobacter inhibens DSM 17395
35% identity, 89% coverage

PP0992 conserved hypothetical protein from Pseudomonas putida KT2440
38% identity, 91% coverage

MIM_c31300 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Advenella mimigardefordensis DPN7
35% identity, 88% coverage

LPC_RS03840 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Legionella pneumophila str. Corby
35% identity, 90% coverage

LPA_RS03800 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Legionella pneumophila 2300/99 Alcoy
35% identity, 90% coverage

LPL_RS03590 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Legionella pneumophila str. Lens
35% identity, 90% coverage

LPP_RS03675 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Legionella pneumophila str. Paris
35% identity, 90% coverage

lpg0676 Hypothetical protein from Legionella pneumophila subsp. pneumophila str. Philadelphia 1
36% identity, 89% coverage

BP2925 conserved hypothetical protein from Bordetella pertussis Tohama I
33% identity, 90% coverage

Q1LE80 UPF0276 protein Rmet_4684 from Cupriavidus metallidurans (strain ATCC 43123 / DSM 2839 / NBRC 102507 / CH34)
Rmet_4684 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Cupriavidus metallidurans CH34
34% identity, 91% coverage

HMPREF0012_00560 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Acinetobacter calcoaceticus RUH2202
32% identity, 90% coverage

PP_2398 conserved hypothetical protein from Pseudomonas putida KT2440
31% identity, 91% coverage

NTHI1443 hypothetical protein from Haemophilus influenzae 86-028NP
HI1600 H. influenzae predicted coding region HI1600 from Haemophilus influenzae Rd KW20
32% identity, 80% coverage

P44268 UPF0276 protein HI_1600 from Haemophilus influenzae (strain ATCC 51907 / DSM 11121 / KW20 / Rd)
32% identity, 83% coverage

B158DRAFT_1333 component of chlorite stress sensing system with B158DRAFT_1334 (DUF2063) from Kangiella aquimarina DSM 16071
30% identity, 90% coverage

NMH_2154 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Neisseria meningitidis H44/76
32% identity, 89% coverage

NMB2142 hypothetical protein from Neisseria meningitidis MC58
32% identity, 89% coverage

NGO1946 hypothetical protein from Neisseria gonorrhoeae FA 1090
32% identity, 89% coverage

NMA0228 hypothetical protein NMA0228 from Neisseria meningitidis Z2491
32% identity, 89% coverage

LF41_2296 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Lysobacter dokdonensis DS-58
29% identity, 91% coverage

Sama_1305 component of chlorite stress sensing system with Sama_1304 from Shewanella amazonensis SB2B
29% identity, 90% coverage

HS_1138 hypothetical protein from Haemophilus somnus 129PT
30% identity, 71% coverage

PA4106 hypothetical protein from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
Q9HWS2 UPF0276 protein PA4106 from Pseudomonas aeruginosa (strain ATCC 15692 / DSM 22644 / CIP 104116 / JCM 14847 / LMG 12228 / 1C / PRS 101 / PAO1)
30% identity, 88% coverage

PA14_21580 hypothetical protein from Pseudomonas aeruginosa UCBPP-PA14
28% identity, 93% coverage

Q9HYW0 UPF0276 protein PA3283 from Pseudomonas aeruginosa (strain ATCC 15692 / DSM 22644 / CIP 104116 / JCM 14847 / LMG 12228 / 1C / PRS 101 / PAO1)
PA3283 hypothetical protein from Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1
28% identity, 93% coverage

SCAB_20761 putative myo-inositol catabolism protein from Streptomyces scabiei 87.22
26% identity, 58% coverage

SCAB_RS09810 DUF692 domain-containing protein from Streptomyces scabiei 87.22
26% identity, 59% coverage

3bwwA / Q0I408 Crystal structure of a duf692 family protein (hs_1138) from haemophilus somnus 129pt at 2.20 a resolution
29% identity, 93% coverage

SCO6045 hypothetical protein from Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2)
27% identity, 60% coverage

MAB_3022c hypothetical protein from Mycobacterium abscessus ATCC 19977
29% identity, 68% coverage

8hi7B / A0A8T8BZJ9 Crystal structure of a holoenzyme tglhi with two fe irons for pseudomonas syringae peptidyl (s) 2-mercaptoglycine biosynthesis (see paper)
24% identity, 87% coverage

7fc0E / A0A1I4IFL0 Reconstitution of mbnabc complex from rugamonas rubra atcc-43154 (groupiii) (see paper)
22% identity, 80% coverage

7dz9B / E3BK14 Mbnabc complex (see paper)
23% identity, 80% coverage

IW22_14845 DUF692 family multinuclear iron-containing protein from Chryseobacterium sp. JM1
22% identity, 43% coverage

PMI30_00628 DUF692 family multinuclear iron-containing protein from Pseudomonas sp. GM50
21% identity, 21% 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