# Topics and Trends in Most Cited RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms Papers, Class of 2026

*Canonical URL: https://pri.pepkio.com/top-papers/rna-and-protein-synthesis-mechanisms/2026*

## What topics and trends defined most-cited RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms research in the Class of 2026?

The Class of 2026 highlights a shift in RNA and protein synthesis research from broad epitranscriptomic profiling to specific mechanisms like mRNA stability, pseudouridine, and 2'-O-methylation. Structural insights via cryo-electron microscopy continue to drive innovation, alongside an increasing translational focus on mRNA therapeutics.

## At a glance

| Fact | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Field | RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms |
| Cohort label | Class of 2026 (2024 publications) |
| Papers analyzed | 8,083 |
| Papers ranked | 20 |
| Top topics in ranked papers | mRNA stability, N6-methyladenosine (m6A), cryo-electron microscopy |
| Publication window | Jan 1, 2024 – Dec 31, 2024 |
| Eligibility | Research articles; reviews excluded |
| Citation window | 18 months post-publication |
| 18m citation range | 44–369 |
| Data source | OpenAlex · Retrieved Jul 2026 |
| License | CC BY 4.0 |

## Rankings

| Rank | Title | Authors | Corresponding authors | Affiliation | Journal | 18m citations | DOI |
| ---: | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---: | --- |
| 1 | Sequence modeling and design from molecular to genome scale with Evo | Eric Nguyen, Michael Poli, Matthew G Durrant, Brian Kang, Dhruva Katrekar, David B Li, Liam J Bartie, Armin W Thomas, Samuel H King, Garyk Brixi, Jeremy Sullivan, Madelena Y Ng, Ashley Lewis, Aaron Lou, Stefano Ermon, Stephen A Baccus, Tina Hernandez-Boussard, Christopher Ré, Patrick D Hsu, Brian L Hie | Eric Nguyen, Michael Poli, Matthew G. Durrant, Brian Kang, Dhruva Katrekar, David Li, Patrick D. Hsu, Brian Hie | Arc Institute, United States | Science | 369 | 10.1126/science.ado9336 |
| 2 | The diversity of splicing modifiers acting on A -1 bulged 5 -splice sites reveals rules for rational drug design | Florian Malard, Antje C Wolter, Julien Marquevielle, Estelle Morvan, Agathe Ecoutin, Simon Rüdisser, Frédéric H.‐T. Allain, Sébastien Campagne | Florian Malard | ARNA - Acides Nucléiques : Régulations Naturelle et Artificielle (IECB - 2 rue Robert Escarpit 33607 Pessac. - France), France | HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) | 148 | 10.1093/nar |
| 3 | Genome organization around nuclear speckles drives mRNA splicing efficiency | Prashant Bhat, Amy Chow, Benjamin Emert, Olivia Ettlin, Sofia A Quinodoz, Mackenzie Strehle, Yodai Takei, Alex Burr, Isabel N Goronzy, Allen W Chen, Wesley Huang, Jose Lorenzo M Ferrer, Elizabeth Soehalim, Say-Tar Goh, Tara Chari, Delaney K Sullivan, Mario R Blanco, Mitchell Guttman | Mitchell Guttman | California Institute of Technology, United States | Nature | 99 | 10.1038/s41586-024-07429-6 |
| 4 | The modified RNA base acp3U is an attachment site for N-glycans in glycoRNA | Yixuan Xie, Peiyuan Chai, Nicholas A Till, Helena Hemberger, Charlotta G Lebedenko, Jennifer Porat, Christopher P Watkins, Reese M Caldwell, Benson M George, Jonathan Perr, Carolyn R Bertozzi, Benjamin A Garcia, Ryan A Flynn | Benjamin A. Garcia, Ryan A. Flynn | Washington University School of Medicine, United States | Cell | 90 | 10.1016/j.cell.2024.07.044 |
| 5 | De novo variants in the RNU4-2 snRNA cause a frequent neurodevelopmental syndrome | Yuyang Chen, Ruebena Dawes, Hyung Chul Kim, Alicia Ljungdahl, Sarah L Stenton, Susan Walker, Jenny Lord, Gabrielle Lemire, Alexandra C Martin-Geary, Vijay S Ganesh, Jialan Ma, Jamie M Ellingford, Erwan Delage, Elston N D'Souza, Shan Dong, David R Adams, Kirsten Allan, Madhura Bakshi, Erin E Baldwin, Seth I Berger, Jonathan A Bernstein, Ishita Bhatnagar, Ed Blair, Natasha J Brown, Lindsay C Burrage, Kimberly Chapman, David J Coman, Alison G Compton, Chloe A Cunningham, Precilla D'Souza, Petr Danecek, Emmanuèle C Délot, Kerith-Rae Dias, Ellen R Elias, Frances Elmslie, Care-Anne Evans, Lisa Ewans, Kimberly Ezell, Jamie L Fraser, Lyndon Gallacher, Casie A Genetti, Anne Goriely, Christina L Grant, Tobias Haack, Jenny E Higgs, Anjali G Hinch, Matthew E Hurles, Alma Kuechler, Katherine L Lachlan, Seema R Lalani, François Lecoquierre, Elsa Leitão, Anna Le Fevre, Richard J Leventer, Jan E Liebelt, Sarah Lindsay, Paul J Lockhart, Alan S Ma, Ellen F Macnamara, Sahar Mansour, Taylor M Maurer, Hector R Mendez, Kay Metcalfe, Stephen B Montgomery, Mariya Moosajee, Marie-Cécile Nassogne, Serena Neumann, Michael O'Donoghue, Melanie O'Leary, Elizabeth E Palmer, Nikhil Pattani, John Phillips, Georgia Pitsava, Ryan Pysar, Heidi L Rehm, Chloe M Reuter, Nicole Revencu, Angelika Riess, Rocio Rius, Lance Rodan, Tony Roscioli, Jill A Rosenfeld, Rani Sachdev, Charles J Shaw-Smith, Cas Simons, Sanjay M Sisodiya, Penny Snell, Laura St Clair, Zornitza Stark, Helen S Stewart, Tiong Yang Tan, Natalie B Tan, Suzanna E L Temple, David R Thorburn, Cynthia J Tifft, Eloise Uebergang, Grace E VanNoy, Pradeep Vasudevan, Eric Vilain, David H Viskochil, Laura Wedd, Matthew T Wheeler, Susan M White, Monica Wojcik, Lynne A Wolfe, Zoe Wolfenson, Caroline F Wright, Changrui Xiao, David Zocche, John L Rubenstein, Eirene Markenscoff-Papadimitriou, Sebastian M Fica, Diana Baralle, Christel Depienne, Daniel G MacArthur, Joanna M M Howson, Stephan J Sanders, Anne O'Donnell-Luria, Nicola Whiffin | Ruebena Dawes, Hyung Chul Kim, Alicia Ljungdahl, Sarah L Stenton, Susan Walker | University of Oxford, United Kingdom | Nature | 89 | 10.1038/s41586-024-07773-7 |
| 6 | Metabolic Recoding of NSUN2‐Mediated m<sup>5</sup>C Modification Promotes the Progression of Colorectal Cancer via the NSUN2/YBX1/m<sup>5</sup>C‐ENO1 Positive Feedback Loop | Baoxiang Chen, Yanrong Deng, Yuntian Hong, Lifang Fan, Xiang Zhai, Heng Hu, Siyuan Yin, Quanjiao Chen, Xiaoyu Xie, Xianghai Ren, Jianhong Zhao, Congqing Jiang | Xiaoyu Xie, Xianghai Ren, Jianhong Zhao, Congqing Jiang | Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, China | Advanced Science | 76 | 10.1002/advs.202309840 |
| 7 | DNA damage induces p53-independent apoptosis through ribosome stalling | Nicolaas J Boon, Rafaela A Oliveira, Pierré-René Körner, Adva Kochavi, Sander Mertens, Yuval Malka, Rhianne Voogd, Suzanne E M van der Horst, Maarten A Huismans, Lidwien P Smabers, Jonne M Draper, Lodewyk F A Wessels, Peter Haahr, Jeanine M L Roodhart, Ton N M Schumacher, Hugo J Snippert, Reuven Agami, Thijn R Brummelkamp | Rafaela A. Oliveira, Pierre-René Körner, Adva Kochavi, Reuven Agami, Thijn R. Brummelkamp | Oncode Institute, Netherlands | Science | 72 | 10.1126/science.adh7950 |
| 8 | m6A sites in the coding region trigger translation-dependent mRNA decay | You Zhou, Miona Ćorović, Peter Hoch-Kraft, Nathalie Meiser, Mikhail Mesitov, Nadine Körtel, Hannah Back, Isabel S Naarmann-de Vries, Kritika Katti, Aleš Obrdlík, Anke Busch, Christoph Dieterich, Štěpánka Vaňáčová, Martin Hengesbach, Kathi Zarnack, Julian König | Kathi Zarnack, Julian König | Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany | Molecular Cell | 70 | 10.1016/j.molcel.2024.10.033 |
| 9 | A 5′ UTR language model for decoding untranslated regions of mRNA and function predictions | Yanyi Chu, Dan Yu, Yupeng Li, Kaixuan Huang, Yue Shen, Le Cong, Jason Zhang, Mengdi Wang | Mengdi Wang | Princeton University, United States | Nature Machine Intelligence | 65 | 10.1038/s42256-024-00823-9 |
| 10 | Branched chemically modified poly(A) tails enhance the translation capacity of mRNA | Hongyu Chen, Dangliang Liu, Jianting Guo, Abhishek Aditham, Yiming Zhou, Jiakun Tian, Shuchen Luo, Jingyi Ren, Alvin Hsu, Jiahao Huang, Franklin Kostas, Mingrui Wu, David R Liu, Xiao Wang | Xiao Wang | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States | Nature Biotechnology | 61 | 10.1038/s41587-024-02174-7 |
| 11 | Chemical and topological design of multicapped mRNA and capped circular RNA to augment translation | Hongyu Chen, Dangliang Liu, Abhishek Aditham, Jianting Guo, Jiahao Huang, Franklin Kostas, Kamal Maher, Mirco J Friedrich, Ramnik J Xavier, Feng Zhang, Xiao Wang | Xiao Wang | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States | Nature Biotechnology | 58 | 10.1038/s41587-024-02393-y |
| 12 | IGF2BP3 promotes mRNA degradation through internal m7G modification | Chang Liu, Xiaoyang Dou, Yutao Zhao, Linda Zhang, Lisheng Zhang, Qing Dai, Jun Liu, Tong Wu, Yu Xiao, Chuan He | Chuan He | The University of Chicago, United States | Nature Communications | 50 | 10.1038/s41467-024-51634-w |
| 13 | Adding α,α-disubstituted and β-linked monomers to the genetic code of an organism | Daniel L Dunkelmann, Carlos Piedrafita, Alexandre Dickson, Kim C Liu, Thomas S Elliott, Marc Fiedler, Dom Bellini, Andrew Zhou, Daniele Cervettini, Jason W Chin | Jason W. Chin | Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, United Kingdom | Nature | 48 | 10.1038/s41586-023-06897-6 |
| 14 | DDX21 mediates co-transcriptional RNA m6A modification to promote transcription termination and genome stability | Jin-Dong Hao, Qian-Lan Liu, Meng-Xia Liu, Xing Yang, Liu-Ming Wang, Si-Yi Su, Wen Xiao, Meng-Qi Zhang, Yi-Chang Zhang, Lan Zhang, Yu-Sheng Chen, Yun-Gui Yang, Jie Ren | Qian-Lan Liu, Yun‐Gui Yang, Jie Ren | Chinese Academy of Sciences, China | Molecular Cell | 47 | 10.1016/j.molcel.2024.03.006 |
| 15 | snoRNA-facilitated protein secretion revealed by transcriptome-wide snoRNA target identification | Bei Liu, Tong Wu, Bernadette A Miao, Fei Ji, Shun Liu, Pingluan Wang, Yutao Zhao, Yuhao Zhong, Arunkumar Sundaram, Tie-Bo Zeng, Marta Majcherska-Agrawal, Robert J Keenan, Tao Pan, Chuan He | Tao Pan, Chuan He | The University of Chicago, United States | Cell | 47 | 10.1016/j.cell.2024.10.046 |
| 16 | Optimizing 5’UTRs for mRNA-delivered gene editing using deep learning | Sebastian Castillo-Hair, Stephen Fedak, Ban Wang, Johannes Linder, Kyle Havens, Michael Certo, Georg Seelig | Georg Seelig | University of Washington, United States | Nature Communications | 46 | 10.1038/s41467-024-49508-2 |
| 17 | Deep-m5U: a deep learning-based approach for RNA 5-methyluridine modification prediction using optimized feature integration | Sumaiya Noor, Afshan Naseem, Hamid Hussain Awan, Wasiq Aslam, Salman Khan, Salman A AlQahtani, Nijad Ahmad | Nijad Ahmad | Purdue University, United States | BMC Bioinformatics | 46 | 10.1186/s12859-024-05978-1 |
| 18 | The structure of a human translation initiation complex reveals two independent roles for the helicase eIF4A | Jailson Brito Querido, Masaaki Sokabe, Irene Díaz-López, Yuliya Gordiyenko, Christopher S Fraser, V Ramakrishnan | Christopher S. Fraser, V. Ramakrishnan | MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, United Kingdom | Nature Structural & Molecular Biology | 45 | 10.1038/s41594-023-01196-0 |
| 19 | Discovering Consensus Regions for Interpretable Identification of RNA N6-Methyladenosine Modification Sites via Graph Contrastive Clustering | Guodong Li, Bowei Zhao, Xiaorui Su, Yue Yang, Pengwei Hu, Xi Zhou, Lun Hu | Guodong Li | Chinese Academy of Sciences, China | IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics | 45 | 10.1109/jbhi.2024.3357979 |
| 20 | 2′-O-methylation at internal sites on mRNA promotes mRNA stability | Yanqiang Li, Yang Yi, Xinlei Gao, Xin Wang, Dongyu Zhao, Rui Wang, Li-Sheng Zhang, Boyang Gao, Yadong Zhang, Lili Zhang, Qi Cao, Kaifu Chen | Qi Cao, Kaifu Chen | Boston Children's Hospital, United States | Molecular Cell | 44 | 10.1016/j.molcel.2024.04.011 |

## Topic trends

### What Topics Define the Class of 2026?

The research landscape is strongly defined by fundamental and applied studies of RNA modifications and structural biology. Topics such as mRNA stability, N6-methyladenosine (m6A) modifications, and high-resolution techniques like cryo-electron microscopy lead the cohort, underscoring the deep mechanistic focus of current studies. Epitranscriptomic modifications, including pseudouridine and 2'-O-methylation, also emerged as central themes. Furthermore, as fundamental insights translate into clinical applications, mRNA therapeutics continues to shape the trajectory of research in RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms.

*Leading research themes*

### How Did Topics Shift from the Class of 2025 to the Class of 2026?

The transition between cohorts reveals a distinct move toward highly specific RNA modifications and their therapeutic utilities. We observe significant rises in studies exploring pseudouridine and 2'-O-methylation, which show dramatic fold changes. Conversely, broader topics such as general epitranscriptomics and ribosome profiling, along with nonspecific m6A reader research, experienced relative declines. This shift suggests that the field is maturing past broad profiling efforts and focusing on the precise molecular impacts of distinct modifications on translation and stability.

*How topics shifted year over year*

## Cite this ranking

```
Pepkio Research Index (PRI). Topics and Trends in Most Cited RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms Papers, Class of 2026. https://pri.pepkio.com/top-papers/rna-and-protein-synthesis-mechanisms/2026. Accessed 2026-07-15.

Zheng Su, Tinsley Li, Thematic Shifts in Early-High-Impact Cancer Genomics and Diagnostics Research: A Bibliometric and Semantic Analysis. bioRxiv 2026.07.04.736459; doi: https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.07.04.736459
```