Thomas Stoeger

Discipline-Wide Scientometric Studies: A Tool to Discover Novel Biology of Aging and Beyond

Biomedical research has traditionally focused on a small subset of genes that were extensively studied during the 1980s and 1990s. This narrow focus has resulted in surprising gaps in our knowledge: typically, half of the genes that are critical to disease, based on unbiased data, have never been mentioned in any research articles. Despite this gap being identified two decades ago, it persists, prompting my research to quantitatively explore why this lack of investigation continues.

Building on these insights, I have integrated over 150 data sources to generate hypotheses on how to effectively study a broader set of genes. To test these hypotheses, I applied them to a scientific field in which I had no prior experience. This effort revealed that most transcriptional changes occurring during human and animal aging are influenced by gene lengths.

I will present my laboratory’s biological follow-up research on this phenomenon, unpublished data resources and tools to facilitate biomedical discovery, and—briefly—an unpublished AI-enabled investigation into the historical archives of the Human Genome Project and the National Human Genome Research Institute.