# Topics and Trends in Most Cited RNA Research and Splicing Papers, Class of 2026

*Canonical URL: https://pri.pepkio.com/top-papers/rna-research-and-splicing/2026*

## What topics and trends defined most-cited RNA Research and Splicing research in the Class of 2026?

Biomolecular condensates and RNA stability mechanisms dominated the Class of 2026. The most striking shift was the surge in fluorogenic aptamers, spliceosome assembly, and neurodevelopmental disorders, while general RNA-binding protein studies declined as research pivoted toward targeted molecular mechanisms and AI-driven structural predictions.

## At a glance

| Fact | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Field | RNA Research and Splicing |
| Cohort label | Class of 2026 (2024 publications) |
| Papers analyzed | 7,854 |
| Papers ranked | 20 |
| Top topics in ranked papers | Biomolecular condensate, RNA stability, Fluorogenic aptamers, Neurodevelopmental disorders, Spliceosome |
| Publication window | Jan 1, 2024 – Dec 31, 2024 |
| Eligibility | Research articles; reviews excluded |
| Citation window | 18 months post-publication |
| 18m citation range | 61–148 |
| Data source | OpenAlex · Retrieved June 2026 |
| License | CC BY 4.0 |

## Rankings

| Rank | Title | Authors | Corresponding authors | Affiliation | Journal | 18m citations | DOI |
| ---: | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---: | --- |
| 1 | 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 | IECB, France | HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) | 148 | 10.1093/nar |
| 2 | rMATS-turbo: an efficient and flexible computational tool for alternative splicing analysis of large-scale RNA-seq data | Yuanyuan Wang, Zhijie Xie, Eric Kutschera, Jenea I Adams, Kathryn E Kadash-Edmondson, Yi Xing | Yi Xing | University of California, Los Angeles, United States | Nature Protocols | 100 | 10.1038/s41596-023-00944-2 |
| 3 | SQANTI3: curation of long-read transcriptomes for accurate identification of known and novel isoforms | Francisco J Pardo-Palacios, Angeles Arzalluz-Luque, Liudmyla Kondratova, Pedro Salguero, Jorge Mestre-Tomás, Rocío Amorín, Eva Estevan-Morió, Tianyuan Liu, Adalena Nanni, Lauren McIntyre, Elizabeth Tseng, Ana Conesa | Ana Conesa | Spanish National Research Council, Spain | Nature Methods | 100 | 10.1038/s41592-024-02229-2 |
| 4 | 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 |
| 5 | Targeting the transferrin receptor to transport antisense oligonucleotides across the mammalian blood-brain barrier | Scarlett J Barker, Mai B Thayer, Chaeyoung Kim, David Tatarakis, Matthew J Simon, Rebekah Dial, Lizanne Nilewski, Robert C Wells, Yinhan Zhou, Megan Afetian, Padma Akkapeddi, Alfred Chappell, Kylie S Chew, Johann Chow, Allisa Clemens, Claire B Discenza, Jason C Dugas, Chrissa Dwyer, Timothy Earr, Connie Ha, Yvonne S Ho, David Huynh, Edwin I Lozano, Srini Jayaraman, Wanda Kwan, Cathal Mahon, Michelle Pizzo, Yaneth Robles-Colmenares, Elysia Roche, Laura Sanders, Alexander Stergioulis, Raymond Tong, Hai Tran, Y Zuchero, Anthony A Estrada, Kapil Gadkar, Christopher M M Koth, Pascal E Sanchez, Robert G Thorne, Ryan J Watts, Thomas Sandmann, Lesley A Kane, Frank Rigo, Mark S Dennis, Joseph W Lewcock, Sarah L DeVos | Scarlett J. Barker, Mai B. Thayer, Chaeyoung Kim, David Tatarakis | Denali Therapeutics Inc., United States | Science Translational Medicine | 94 | 10.1126/scitranslmed.adi2245 |
| 6 | 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 |
| 7 | RNA-driven phase transitions in biomolecular condensates | Gable M Wadsworth, Sukanya Srinivasan, Lien B Lai, Moulisubhro Datta, Venkat Gopalan, Priya R Banerjee | Priya R. Banerjee | The State University of New York at Buffalo, United States | Molecular Cell | 88 | 10.1016/j.molcel.2024.09.005 |
| 8 | Cell surface RNAs control neutrophil recruitment | Ningning Zhang, Wenwen Tang, Lidiane Torres, Xujun Wang, Yasmeen Ajaj, Li Zhu, Yi Luan, Hongyue Zhou, Yadong Wang, Dingyao Zhang, Vadim Kurbatov, Sajid A Khan, Priti Kumar, Andres Hidalgo, Dianqing Wu, Jun Lu | Dianqing Wu, Jun Lü | Yale University, United States | Cell | 81 | 10.1016/j.cell.2023.12.033 |
| 9 | Mis-spliced transcripts generate de novo proteins in TDP-43–related ALS/FTD | Sahba Seddighi, Yue A Qi, Anna-Leigh Brown, Oscar G Wilkins, Colleen Bereda, Cedric Belair, Yong-Jie Zhang, Mercedes Prudencio, Matthew J Keuss, Aditya Khandeshi, Sarah Pickles, Sarah E Kargbo-Hill, James Hawrot, Daniel M Ramos, Hebao Yuan, Jessica Roberts, Erika Kelmer Sacramento, Syed I Shah, Mike A Nalls, Jennifer M Colón-Mercado, Joel F Reyes, Veronica H Ryan, Matthew P Nelson, Casey N Cook, Ziyi Li, Laurel Screven, Justin Y Kwan, Puja R Mehta, Matteo Zanovello, Martina Hallegger, Anantharaman Shantaraman, Lingyan Ping, Yuka Koike, Björn Oskarsson, Nathan P Staff, Duc M Duong, Aisha Ahmed, Maria Secrier, Jernej Ule, Steven Jacobson, Daniel S Reich, Jonathan D Rohrer, Andrea Malaspina, Dennis W Dickson, Jonathan D Glass, Alessandro Ori, Nicholas T Seyfried, Manolis Maragkakis, Leonard Petrucelli, Pietro Fratta, Michael E Ward | Sahba Seddighi, Yue Qi, Anna‐Leigh Brown, Leonard Petrucelli, Pietro Fratta, Michael E. Ward | National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, United States | Science Translational Medicine | 77 | 10.1126/scitranslmed.adg7162 |
| 10 | Spatially exploring RNA biology in archival formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues | Zhiliang Bai, Dingyao Zhang, Yan Gao, Bo Tao, Daiwei Zhang, Shuozhen Bao, Archibald Enninful, Yadong Wang, Haikuo Li, Graham Su, Xiaolong Tian, Ningning Zhang, Yang Xiao, Yang Liu, Mark Gerstein, Mingyao Li, Yi Xing, Jun Lu, Mina L Xu, Rong Fan | Zhiliang Bai, Mingyao Li, Yi Xing, Jun Lü, Mina L. Xu, Rong Fan | Yale University, United States | Cell | 75 | 10.1016/j.cell.2024.09.001 |
| 11 | Transcriptome-wide splicing network reveals specialized regulatory functions of the core spliceosome | Malgorzata E Rogalska, Estefania Mancini, Sophie Bonnal, André Gohr, Bryan M Dunyak, Niccolò Arecco, Peter G Smith, Frédéric H Vaillancourt, Juan Valcárcel | Malgorzata Ewa Rogalska, Estefanía Mancini, Sophie Bonnal, Juan Valcárcel | Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Spain | Science | 74 | 10.1126/science.adn8105 |
| 12 | Global impact of unproductive splicing on human gene expression | Benjamin Fair, Carlos F Buen Abad Najar, Junxing Zhao, Stephanie Lozano, Austin Reilly, Gabriela Mossian, Jonathan P Staley, Jingxin Wang, Yang I Li | Yang Li | University of Chicago, United States | Nature Genetics | 70 | 10.1038/s41588-024-01872-x |
| 13 | 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 |
| 14 | Multi-purpose RNA language modelling with motif-aware pretraining and type-guided fine-tuning | Ning Wang, 将尚 渡辺, Yuchen Li, Xuhong Li, Shahid Mumtaz, Linghe Kong, Haoyi Xiong | Linghe Kong, Haoyi Xiong | Baidu Inc., China | Nature Machine Intelligence | 69 | 10.1038/s42256-024-00836-4 |
| 15 | RNA m5C oxidation by TET2 regulates chromatin state and leukaemogenesis | Zhongyu Zou, Xiaoyang Dou, Ying Li, Zijie Zhang, Juan Wang, Boyang Gao, Yu Xiao, Yiding Wang, Lijie Zhao, Chenxi Sun, Qinzhe Liu, Xianbin Yu, Hao Wang, Juyeong Hong, Qing Dai, Feng-Chun Yang, Mingjiang Xu, Chuan He | Mingjiang Xu, Chuan He | The University of Chicago, United States | Nature | 69 | 10.1038/s41586-024-07969-x |
| 16 | Identification of RNA structures and their roles in RNA functions | Xinang Cao, Yueying Zhang, Yiliang Ding, Yue Wan | Yue Wan | Genome Institute of Singapore, Singapore | Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology | 66 | 10.1038/s41580-024-00748-6 |
| 17 | miRNATissueAtlas 2025: an update to the uniformly processed and annotated human and mouse non-coding RNA tissue atlas | Shusruto Rishik, Pascal Hirsch, Friederike Grandke, Tobias Fehlmann, Andreas Keller | Shusruto Rishik | Saarland University, Germany | Nucleic Acids Research | 64 | 10.1093/nar/gkae1036 |
| 18 | Nuclear export of circular RNA | Linh H Ngo, Andrew G Bert, B Kate Dredge, Tobias Williams, Vincent Murphy, Wanqiu Li, William B Hamilton, Kirstyn T Carey, John Toubia, Katherine A Pillman, Dawei Liu, Jessica Desogus, Jeffrey A Chao, Andrew J Deans, Gregory J Goodall, Vihandha O Wickramasinghe | Gregory J. Goodall, Vihandha O. Wickramasinghe | Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Australia | Nature | 62 | 10.1038/s41586-024-07060-5 |
| 19 | On the genetic basis of tail-loss evolution in humans and apes | Bo Xia, Weimin Zhang, Guisheng Zhao, Xinru Zhang, Jiangshan Bai, Ran Brosh, Aleksandra Wudzinska, Emily Huang, Hannah Ashe, Gwen Ellis, Maayan Pour, Yu Zhao, Camila Coelho, Yinan Zhu, Alexander Miller, Jeremy S Dasen, Matthew T Maurano, Sang Y Kim, Jef D Boeke, Itai Yanai | Bo Xia, Jef D. Boeke, Itai Yanai | NYU Langone Health, United States | Nature | 61 | 10.1038/s41586-024-07095-8 |
| 20 | Single-cell long-read sequencing-based mapping reveals specialized splicing patterns in developing and adult mouse and human brain | Anoushka Joglekar, Wen Hu, Bei Zhang, Oleksandr Narykov, Mark Diekhans, Jordan Marrocco, Jennifer Balacco, Lishomwa C Ndhlovu, Teresa A Milner, Olivier Fedrigo, Erich D Jarvis, Gloria Sheynkman, Dmitry Korkin, M Elizabeth Ross, Hagen U Tilgner | Hagen Tilgner | Weill Cornell Medicine, United States | Nature Neuroscience | 61 | 10.1038/s41593-024-01616-4 |

## Topic trends

### What Topics Define the Class of 2026?

The Class of 2026 in RNA Research and Splicing is defined by an overarching focus on dynamic physical structures and regulatory control mechanisms governing post-transcriptional expression. Biomolecular condensates lead the field as the single most prominent concept, featured in 8% of top-ranked publications, emphasizing how liquid-liquid phase separation organizes cellular machinery for RNA metabolism. Closely coupled with phase behavior are core post-transcriptional processes: RNA stability, mRNA stability, and RNA localization each account for 6% of top papers, highlighting an active research focus on intracellular transport and turnover dynamics. Emerging technological and disease frontiers are also strongly represented. Fluorogenic aptamers featured prominently in 6% of papers, reflecting rapid adoption of novel live-cell RNA imaging tools. Simultaneously, the spliceosome complex and its involvement in neurodevelopmental disorders emerged as key disease mechanisms, alongside N6-methyladenosine (m6A) epitranscriptomic modifications. Together, these foundational topics illustrate how structural biophysics, RNA modification, and imaging technologies converge to unravel regulatory networks in health and disease.

*Leading research themes*

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

The transition from the Class of 2025 to the Class of 2026 reveals a significant shift toward precision RNA biophysics and neurodevelopmental pathology. Most notably, fluorogenic aptamers, spliceosome structural biology, neurodevelopmental disorders, and RNA localization emerged as major new focal points, climbing from absence in previous cohorts to being featured in 6% of top publications. Similarly, specialized concepts such as masked language modeling for RNA structure prediction, de novo variant identification, nuclear speckles, and RNU4-2 snRNA entered the top rankings, demonstrating the integration of machine learning and genomic sequencing in splicing studies. In contrast, broader foundational terms experienced relative declines in mention frequency. General RNA-binding protein studies fell by 66% (from 12% to 4%), while phase separation (-40%), N6-methyladenosine (-25%), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (-50%) saw moderate consolidation. This realignment indicates that research has evolved from broad descriptive characterizations of phase separation toward highly specialized molecular mechanisms and diagnostic applications.

*How topics shifted year over year*

## Cite this ranking

```
Pepkio Research Index (PRI). Topics and Trends in Most Cited RNA Research and Splicing Papers, Class of 2026. https://pri.pepkio.com/top-papers/rna-research-and-splicing/2026. Accessed 2026-07-21.

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
```