DNA Damage Repair System in Plants: A Worldwide Research Update

Abstract

Living organisms are usually exposed to various DNA damaging agents so the mechanisms to detect and repair diverse DNA lesions have developed in all organisms with the result of maintaining genome integrity. Defects in DNA repair machinery contribute to cancer, certain diseases, and aging. Therefore, conserving the genomic sequence in organisms is key for the perpetuation of life. The machinery of DNA damage repair (DDR) in prokaryotes and eukaryotes is similar. Plants also share mechanisms for DNA repair with animals, although they differ in other important details. Plants have, surprisingly, been less investigated than other living organisms in this context, despite the fact that numerous lethal mutations in animals are viable in plants. In this manuscript, a worldwide bibliometric analysis of DDR systems and DDR research in plants was made. A comparison between both subjects was accomplished. The bibliometric analyses prove that the first study about DDR systems in plants (1987) was published thirteen years later than that for other living organisms (1975). Despite the increase in the number of papers about DDR mechanisms in plants in recent decades, nowadays the number of articles published each year about DDR systems in plants only represents 10% of the total number of articles about DDR. The DDR research field was done by 74 countries while the number of countries involved in the DDR & Plant field is 44. This indicates the great influence that DDR research in the plant field currently has, worldwide. As expected, the percentage of studies published about DDR systems in plants has increased in the subject area of agricultural and biological sciences and has diminished in medicine with respect to DDR studies in other living organisms. In short, bibliometric results highlight the current interest in DDR research in plants among DDR studies and can open new perspectives in the research field of DNA damage repair.

Worldwide Research Trends on Wheat and Barley: A Bibliometric Comparative Analysis

“…The main research subjects in a given manuscript are summarised by the keywords defined in it. Thus, the assessment of the keywords of scientific documents allows for the establishment of the research trends in a specific field [45]. A word cloud made with all 160 keywords that the Scopus database showed for the articles related to wheat or barley, analysed in the present report, are shown in Figure 6.…”

Renewable Energy in Urban Areas: Worldwide Research Trends

“…The search was limited between the years 1977 and 2017. The success of this methodology has also been proved by other studies [46][47][48][49].…”

The Electric Bicycle: Worldwide Research Trends

“…The search query was: TITLE-ABS-KEY ("Electri* bicycl*" OR "Electri* Bik*" OR "e-bike"), since the scientific literature presents different ways to refer to electric or electrical and bicycle or bike, in addition to singular or plural forms, and recently e-bike. This methodology has been used successfully in other bibliometric studies [22][23][24]. In this way, with the publications that referred to the electric bicycle, the evolution of scientific production can be studied in accordance with years, type of publication, language, distribution of publications by country, indexation categories of publications, and analysis of key words; this last aspect is the one that provides the most information for the research carried out.…”