Arabidopsis thaliana, a small
flowering plant that is a member of the mustard family, has become
widely used as a model organism for the study of the molecular and
cellular biology of plants. The top 25 papers in our Special Topic on Arabidopsis
and Plant Disease Resistance cover a wide variety of research areas
within the field. The majority of this collection of papers deals with
ways in which to measure or monitor gene structure; chief among these
is the top-ranked work of Mark Schena and his colleagues on monitoring
gene expression patterns with a novel cDNA microarray. Other methods
reported include microsatellite loci, codominant ecotype-specific PCR-based
markers, recombinant inbred cell lines, and amplified polymorphic DNA
markers. Gene transformation also frequently appears in this listing,
as well as the role of the ethylene response gene and its mutations,
defense responses of resistant gene-dependent plants, and the actions
of resistance gene products. Other areas of note within this
collection of papers include studies in dehydration tolerance,
blue-light photoreceptors, and photosensory specificity.
Methodology
To construct this database,
papers were extracted based on the title- abstract- and author-supplied keywords for
Arabidopsis. The keywords used were as follows: arabidopsis.
The baseline time span for this database
is 1992 - 2002. The resulting database contained 18,180 papers; 29,339 authors;
83 countries; 722 journals; and 3,272 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 1992 - 2002.
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. The paper thresholds used to determine scientist, institution, country, and journal rankings according to total cites/paper were as follows:
26, 35, 33, and 26, respectively.
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