Open Targets and European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
PLoS Biol. 2018 Sep 26;16(9):e3000034. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000034. eCollection 2018 Sep.
Determining the functions of human genes is a key objective for understanding disease and enabling development of new therapeutic approaches. A number of recent studies have shown that the amount of attention the research community gives to each of the more than 20,000 human genes is dramatically skewed toward specific, well-known genes. In this issue, Stoeger and colleagues uncover the factors that explain this bias and offer a way ahead to move more genes into the research limelight.
确定人类基因的功能是理解疾病和开发新治疗方法的主要目标。最近的一些研究表明,研究界对超过 20000 个人类基因的关注程度严重偏向于特定的、众所周知的基因。在本期杂志中,Stoeger 及其同事揭示了导致这种偏见的因素,并提出了一种方法,使更多的基因进入研究的焦点。