GET /keywords/search

uniprot.org:uniprot-api

Summary: Search keywords
Operation ID: searchKeywords
Auth: none

Search UniProt's controlled vocabulary keywords for protein classification. Keywords are curated terms that describe protein attributes such as molecular function, biological process, subcellular location, disease association, and post-translational modifications. Use this endpoint to find keyword definitions and their hierarchical relationships. Each keyword includes its definition, synonyms, Gene Ontology (GO) mappings, parent/child relationships in the keyword hierarchy, and statistics showing how many proteins are tagged with this keyword. This is useful for understanding the UniProt annotation system and finding proteins with specific characteristics.

Original spec description

Search UniProt controlled vocabulary keywords for protein classification.

Usage Tips

- Keywords follow a hierarchical structure (parent/child relationships) - Each keyword has a unique ID (e.g., KW-0418 for "Kinase") - Keywords link to Gene Ontology (GO) terms where applicable - `statistics` show reviewed and unreviewed protein counts for each keyword - Use `parents` to navigate up the hierarchy and `children` to find more specific terms - `category` shows the broad classification (e.g., Molecular function, Biological process) - Keywords are manually curated - not all proteins have all applicable keywords

Parameters (3)

format (string, query, optional, default: json)

Constraints: {'enum': ['json', 'xml']}

query (string, query, required)

Search query (e.g., 'kinase', 'membrane')

size (integer, query, optional, default: 25)

Examples (3)

TitleTypeURLAction
Basic keyword search for kinase curl https://rest.uniprot.org/keywords/search?query=kinase
Search for membrane with custom result size curl https://rest.uniprot.org/keywords/search?query=membrane&size=10
Search for enzyme with explicit format and small size curl https://rest.uniprot.org/keywords/search?query=enzyme&format=json&size=5

Probe History

Latency

Status Codes

TimeStatusLatencySize
2026-03-23 10:52:18.852281 200 142ms
2026-03-23 09:42:10.880423 200 136ms
2026-03-23 09:07:28.749763 200 140ms

Response Changes

WhenOldNew
2026-03-23 09:42:10.880423 2bbd681244f0 11dadc83a603
2026-03-23 10:52:18.852281 11dadc83a603 42f2eb7cdf41