Abstract
It is known that research into human genes is heavily skewed towards genes that have been widely studied for decades, including many genes that were being studied before the productive phase of the Human Genome Project. This means that the genes most frequently investigated by the research community tend to be only marginally more important to human physiology and disease than a random selection of genes. Based on an analysis of 10,395 research publications about SARSCoV- 2 that mention at least one human gene, we report here that the COVID-19 literature up to mid- October 2020 follows a similar pattern. This means that a large number of host genes that have been implicated in SARS-CoV-2 infection by four genome-wide studies remain unstudied. While quantifying the consequences of this neglect is not possible, they could be significant.
Original language | English (US) |
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Article number | e61981 |
Pages (from-to) | 1-12 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | eLife |
Volume | 9 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 2020 |
Funding
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases U19AI135964 Luís A Nunes Amaral National Science Foundation 1956338 Luís A Nunes Amaral Simons Foundation DMS-1764421 Luís A Nunes Amaral Air Force Office of Scientific Research FA9550-19-1-0354 Luís A Nunes Amaral National Institute on Aging K99AG068544 Thomas Stoeger.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
- General Immunology and Microbiology
- General Neuroscience