“Fashionable Gene” of COVID era

Ace2 has become the new -p53*- of covid era.
*DISCLAIMER: In terms of popularity

Although I don’t like to use terms like “fashionable genes”, I will briefly explain what I meant by this sentence.

Have you heard of “fashionable genes” in the human genome? This is used to explain most studied genes throughout the years. Moreover it explains the current “trend” of the scientific research (1).
It is expected a “guardian of genome” (a.k.a p53) to be studied a lot, in the presence of increasing cases of cancer worldwide. However, depending on where the focus shifts, this “fashionable genes” might change during the given time interval.

Number of papers published during the given time interval (Scopus results for “ace2” keyword by 5 April 2021)

Number of papers published during the given time interval (Scopus results for “p53” keyword by 5 April 2021)

I put two figures of Scopus analysis results for the keyword of “ace2” and “p53”, so you can see the sharp decline of the papers published related to p53 (still very high though, since not only cancer but also many other diseases are included) vs. rise of ace2 in 2020–1 interval. This is expected for sure. In fact, when there is more ongoing research, there is more possibility of “linking”, finding somewhat relevance and connecting the dots, especially in the era of “omics”. In this case it might be crucial to find the right connections by trying to avoid the “liability of hypothesis” and remembering the importance of the refutability of good scientific theories (2).

Previously published at my LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/activity-6785100665304817665-kWua

References:

1- Dolgin, E. The most popular genes in the human genome. Nature 551, 427–431 (2017). https://doi-org.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/10.1038/d41586-017-07291-9

2- Yanai, I., Lercher, M. A hypothesis is a liability. Genome Biol 21, 231 (2020). https://doi-org.libproxy1.nus.edu.sg/10.1186/s13059-020-02133-w