PaperBLAST – Find papers about a protein or its homologs

 

PaperBLAST

PaperBLAST Hits for metacyc::MONOMER-3165 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase α subunit (EC 1.13.11.8; EC 1.13.11.57) (Comamonas testosteroni) (149 a.a., MALEKPYLDV...)

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:

PmdA / Q8RNY0 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase α subunit (EC 1.13.11.8; EC 1.13.11.57) from Comamonas testosteroni (see paper)
Q8RNY0 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase (EC 1.13.11.8) from Comamonas testosteroni (see paper)
100% identity, 100% coverage

AAK73572.1 PmdA from Comamonas testosteroni (see paper)
99% identity, 100% coverage

proOa / BAD04057.1 alpha subunit of protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase from Pseudomonas straminea (see paper)
98% identity, 100% coverage

pmdA / BAI50714.1 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase alpha subunit from Comamonas sp. E6 (see paper)
98% identity, 100% coverage

AA671_20045 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase subunit alpha from Delftia tsuruhatensis
90% identity, 98% coverage

Rfer_0331 Protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase from Rhodoferax ferrireducens DSM 15236
81% identity, 97% coverage

D3M96_07060 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase subunit alpha from Alcaligenes aquatilis
80% identity, 85% coverage

DelCs14_3008 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase subunit alpha from Delftia sp. Cs1-4
79% identity, 85% coverage

AA671_25085 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase subunit alpha from Delftia tsuruhatensis
78% identity, 85% coverage

Q9AGL8 Protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase from Arthrobacter keyseri
71% identity, 30% coverage

Asphe3_42380 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase subunit alpha/beta from Pseudarthrobacter phenanthrenivorans Sphe3
71% identity, 30% coverage

ligA / P22635 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase alpha chain (EC 1.13.11.8) from Sphingobium sp. (strain NBRC 103272 / SYK-6) (see 2 papers)
G2IQQ4 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase (subunit 2/2) (EC 1.13.11.8) from Sphingobium sp. (see paper)
ligA / BAB88742.1 alpha subunit of protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase from Sphingomonas paucimobilis (see 5 papers)
P22635 Protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase alpha chain from Sphingobium sp. (strain NBRC 103272 / SYK-6)
66% identity, 79% coverage

NSU_3625 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase subunit alpha from Novosphingobium pentaromativorans US6-1
64% identity, 77% coverage

Saro_2813 Protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase from Novosphingobium aromaticivorans DSM 12444
59% identity, 79% coverage

ligA / BAA97117.1 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase small subunit, partial from Sphingomonas paucimobilis (see 3 papers)
68% identity, 70% coverage

BRADO2379 Protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase (4,5-PCD), alpha chain from Bradyrhizobium sp. ORS278
39% identity, 70% coverage

SLG_37530 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase subunit alpha from Sphingobium sp. SYK-6
42% identity, 70% coverage

NSU_3635 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase subunit alpha from Novosphingobium pentaromativorans US6-1
40% identity, 70% coverage

AA671_06970 protocatechuate 4,5-dioxygenase subunit alpha from Delftia tsuruhatensis
41% identity, 69% coverage

Saro_1233 Extradiol ring-cleavage dioxygenase LigAB, LigA subunit from Novosphingobium aromaticivorans DSM 12444
37% identity, 41% coverage

gllA / Q88JX5 gallate dioxygenase monomer (EC 1.13.11.57) from Pseudomonas putida (strain ATCC 47054 / DSM 6125 / CFBP 8728 / NCIMB 11950 / KT2440) (see paper)
GALA_PSEPK / Q88JX5 Gallate dioxygenase; Gallate degradation protein A; EC 1.13.11.57 from Pseudomonas putida (strain ATCC 47054 / DSM 6125 / CFBP 8728 / NCIMB 11950 / KT2440) (see 2 papers)
30% identity, 29% coverage

CBL13_00562 gallate dioxygenase from Pseudomonas putida
30% identity, 23% coverage

PP_RS13165 gallate dioxygenase from Pseudomonas putida KT2440
30% identity, 23% coverage

PPUTLS46_010694 gallate dioxygenase from Pseudomonas putida LS46
30% identity, 23% coverage

E2P69_RS13540 protocatechuate 3,4-dioxygenase subunit alpha from Xanthomonas perforans
28% identity, 66% coverage

A9762_21285 protocatechuate 3,4-dioxygenase from Pandoraea sp. ISTKB
31% identity, 68% coverage

XC_3426 protocatechuate degradation protein from Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris str. 8004
28% identity, 65% coverage

XAC0879 protocatechuate degradation protein from Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. citri str. 306
27% identity, 66% coverage

desB / Q5NTE5 gallate dioxygenase monomer (EC 1.13.11.57) from Sphingomonas paucimobilis (see paper)
G2IKE5 gallate dioxygenase (EC 1.13.11.57) from Sphingobium sp. SYK-6 (see paper)
Q5NTE5 gallate dioxygenase (EC 1.13.11.57) from Sphingomonas paucimobilis (see paper)
desB / BAD80871.1 gallate dioxygenase from Sphingomonas paucimobilis (see 2 papers)
SLG_03330 gallate dioxygenase from Sphingobium sp. SYK-6
26% identity, 24% coverage

3wr9A / G2IKE5 Crystal structure of the anaerobic desb-gallate complex (see paper)
26% identity, 24% 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