ArticlePloS one2014
Functionally enigmatic genes: a case study of the brain ignorome.
Article in PloS one, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 67 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
67 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Knowledge-Driven Mechanistic Enrichment of the Preeclampsia Ignorome.Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing. Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing · 2023Pooled it
- The characteristics of early-stage research into human genes are substantially different from subsequent research.PLoS biology · 2022Pooled it
- Identification of 22q13 genes most likely to contribute to Phelan McDermid syndrome.European journal of human genetics : EJHG · 2018Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of transcriptomic datasets identifies genes enriched in the mammalian circadian pacemaker.Nucleic acids research · 2017Pooled it
- Revealing the acute asthma ignorome: characterization and validation of uninvestigated gene networks.Scientific reports · 2016Pooled it
- Acute Ultra Low Dose THC Attenuates Anxiety-Like Behavior in a Mouse Model for Major-Depressive Disorder.Journal of molecular neuroscience : MN · 2026Article
- Decoding the dark genome reveals its organisation into modular disease networks.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium Portal: facilitating investigation of gene function and providing insights into human disease.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium: Investigating gene function and providing insights into human disease.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Functional assays inGenome research · 2025Review
- A longitudinal analysis of function annotations of the human proteome reveals consistently high biases.Database : the journal of biological databases and curation · 2025Article
- A graph theoretical approach to experimental prioritization in genome-scale investigations.Mammalian genome : official journal of the International Mammalian Genome Society · 2024Article
- Article
- An emerging multi-omic understanding of the genetics of opioid addiction.The Journal of clinical investigation · 2024Article
- Zebrafish reveal new roles for Fam83f in hatching and the DNA damage-mediated autophagic response.Open biology · 2024Article
- Clover: An unbiased method for prioritizing differentially expressed genes using a data-driven approach.Genes to cells : devoted to molecular & cellular mechanisms · 2024Article
- Microenzymes: Is There Anybody Out There?The protein journal · 2024Review
- Resource: A Curated Database of Brain-Related Functional Gene Sets (Brain.GMT).bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Ageing restructures the transcriptome of the hypothalamic supraoptic nucleus and alters the response to dehydration.npj aging · 2023Article
- Transcriptomics of the Carotid Body.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2023Review
7 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
What proportion of genes with intense and selective expression in specific tissues, cells, or systems are still almost completely uncharacterized with respect to biological function? In what ways do these functionally enigmatic genes differ from well-studied genes? To address these two questions, we devised a computational approach that defines so-called ignoromes. As proof of principle, we extracted and analyzed a large subset of genes with intense and selective expression in brain. We find that publications associated with this set are highly skewed--the top 5% of genes absorb 70% of the relevant literature. In contrast, approximately 20% of genes have essentially no neuroscience literature. Analysis of the ignorome over the past decade demonstrates that it is stubbornly persistent, and the rapid expansion of the neuroscience literature has not had the expected effect on numbers of these genes. Surprisingly, ignorome genes do not differ from well-studied genes in terms of connectivity in coexpression networks. Nor do they differ with respect to numbers of orthologs, paralogs, or protein domains. The major distinguishing characteristic between these sets of genes is date of discovery, early discovery being associated with greater research momentum--a genomic bandwagon effect. Finally we ask to what extent massive genomic, imaging, and phenotype data sets can be used to provide high-throughput functional annotation for an entire ignorome. In a majority of cases we have been able to extract and add significant information for these neglected genes. In several cases--ELMOD1, TMEM88B, and DZANK1--we have exploited sequence polymorphisms, large phenome data sets, and reverse genetic methods to evaluate the function of ignorome genes.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.