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A new study has identified the reasons why biomedical researchers have studied only about 2,000 genes among approximately 20,000 in the human genome. Genes that are easier to experiment with or whose absence is extremely disruptive to the organism are historically well-studied, they report today (September 19) in PLOS Biology.
“It is stunning that we sit here 15 years after the Human Genome Project, and still know little to nothing about so many genes,” Jay Shendure of the University of Washington who was not involved in the study tells The Atlantic. “In a world of finite resources, it does not make sense to invest equal effort in every gene. But it’s clear that something is amiss in the status quo of research allocation.”
The researchers integrated numerous biomedical research–related datasets and combed through the collection to identify the underlying causes of this lack of study. In the ...
