Large-scale investigation of the reasons why potentially important genes are ignored

Biomedical research has been previously reported to primarily focus on a minority of all known genes. Here, we demonstrate that these differences in attention can be explained, to a large extent, exclusively from a small set of identifiable chemical, physical, and biological properties of genes. Tog...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS biology 2018-09, Vol.16 (9), p.e2006643-e2006643
Main Authors: Stoeger, Thomas, Gerlach, Martin, Morimoto, Richard I, Nunes Amaral, Luís A
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biology and Life Sciences
Biomedical Research
Gene Expression Regulation
Genes
Genetic research
Health aspects
Humans
Identification and classification
Knowledge
Medical research
Medicine, Experimental
Meta
Methods
Models, Biological
People and Places
Research and Analysis Methods
Science Policy
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Summary:Biomedical research has been previously reported to primarily focus on a minority of all known genes. Here, we demonstrate that these differences in attention can be explained, to a large extent, exclusively from a small set of identifiable chemical, physical, and biological properties of genes. Together with knowledge about homologous genes from model organisms, these features allow us to accurately predict the number of publications on individual human genes, the year of their first report, the levels of funding awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the development of drugs against disease-associated genes. By explicitly identifying the reasons for gene-specific bias and performing a meta-analysis of existing computational and experimental knowledge bases, we describe gene-specific strategies for the identification of important but hitherto ignored genes that can open novel directions for future investigation.
ISSN:1545-7885
1544-9173
1545-7885
DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.2006643