Apoptosis, or programmed cell death—the
distinct form of cell death caused by physiologic processes as opposed
to some external stimuli, such as a wound—is a hot topic in medical
and biochemical research today. The top 25 papers in our analysis of
apoptosis research over the past decade cover a wide variety of topics
that can be, for the most part, categorized into three main themes:
novel methods for identifying apoptosis in the lab; the role of
apoptosis in pathogenesis and treatment of disease; and the various
physiological processes and molecules that affect apoptosis. Methods
for identifying apoptosis were restricted to inferred data from gel
electrophoresis, but new, more straightforward methods have been
developed, including labeling nuclear DNA fragmentation in situ, and
using a propidium iodide stain with flow cytometry. Apoptosis plays a
role in many diseases, such as cancer, viral infections, and
autoimmune and neurodegenerative disorders. There is a great potential
for treatment of these diseases in developing agents that can alter
the apoptotic process and change the natural disease progression.
Molecules whose roles in apoptosis have been investigated include:
Bcl-2 and c-myc proteins, the p53 tumor suppressor gene and various
tumor suppressor gene products, MAP kinases, and proteases.
Correlations between non-mammalian and mammalian apoptosis, apoptosis
during nervous system development, and the dependence of the apoptotic
process on survival signals from neighboring cells are also explored
in the top 25 papers in our survey.
The
Methodology
To construct this database,
papers were extracted based on title—and author-supplied keywords for
Apoptosis. The keywords used were as follows: "apoptosis"
and "cell-death".
The baseline time span for this database
is 1991 - 2001. The resulting database contained 43,433 papers; 82,411
authors; 98 countries; 2,038 journals; and 8,707 institutions.
Rankings
Once the database was in place,
it was used to generate the lists of top 25 papers, authors, journals,
institutions, and nations, covering a time span of 1991-2001.
The top 25 papers are ranked
according to total cites. Rankings for author, journal, institution,
and country are listed in three ways: according to total
cites, total papers, and total cites/paper.
