ArticleeLife2024
Meta-Research: Understudied genes are lost in a leaky pipeline between genome-wide assays and reporting of results.
Article in eLife, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Research Progress in Multi-Omics Analysis of Dairy Products: Nutritional Quality, Safety Evaluation, and Health Functions.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Transcription-based identification of uncharacterized genes in the human immune response.European journal of human genetics : EJHG · 2026Article
- Evolutionary and functional constraints structure human gene research visibility.BMC genomics · 2026Article
- Alkamines reveal a hidden layer of steroid and drug metabolism.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Onset of embryonic and placental defects coincide in 19 of 22 novel mid-gestation lethal murine knockout lines.Development (Cambridge, England) · 2026Article
- A Chemical-Genetic Interaction Matrix Reveals Drug Mechanism and Genetic Architecture.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Commentary: GETgene-AI: a framework for prioritizing actionable cancer drug targets.Frontiers in systems biology · 2026Article
- Bias-aware training and evaluation of link prediction algorithms in network biology.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- A longitudinal analysis of function annotations of the human proteome reveals consistently high biases.Database : the journal of biological databases and curation · 2025Article
- Pipeline to explore information on genome editing using large language models and genome editing meta-database.Database : the journal of biological databases and curation · 2025Article
- Unmeasured human transcription factor ChIP-seq data shape functional genomics and demand strategic prioritization.Briefings in functional genomics · 2025Article
- Selecting genes for analysis using historically contingent progress: from RNA changes to protein-protein interactions.Nucleic acids research · 2025Article
- Selecting genes for analysis using historically contingent progress: from RNA changes to protein-protein interactions.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Comprehensive identification of GASA genes in sunflower and expression profiling in response to drought.BMC genomics · 2024Article
- Gene length could be a critical factor in the aging of the genome.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Underexplored Molecular Mechanisms of Toxicity.Journal of xenobiotics · 2024Article
- Software tools identify forgotten genes.Nature · 2024Article
- Time is ticking faster for long genes in aging.Trends in genetics : TIG · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Present-day publications on human genes primarily feature genes that already appeared in many publications prior to completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. These patterns persist despite the subsequent adoption of high-throughput technologies, which routinely identify novel genes associated with biological processes and disease. Although several hypotheses for bias in the selection of genes as research targets have been proposed, their explanatory powers have not yet been compared. Our analysis suggests that understudied genes are systematically abandoned in favor of better-studied genes between the completion of -omics experiments and the reporting of results. Understudied genes remain abandoned by studies that cite these -omics experiments. Conversely, we find that publications on understudied genes may even accrue a greater number of citations. Among 45 biological and experimental factors previously proposed to affect which genes are being studied, we find that 33 are significantly associated with the choice of hit genes presented in titles and abstracts of -omics studies. To promote the investigation of understudied genes, we condense our insights into a tool,
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Registered trials
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.