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. 2022 Apr;247(7):538-550.
doi: 10.1177/15353702221075035. Epub 2022 Feb 7.

What does desmin do: A bibliometric assessment of the functions of the muscle intermediate filament

Affiliations

What does desmin do: A bibliometric assessment of the functions of the muscle intermediate filament

Geyse Gomes et al. Exp Biol Med (Maywood). 2022 Apr.

Abstract

Intermediate filaments were first described in muscle in 1968, and desmin was biochemically identified about 10 years afterwards. Its importance grew after the identification of desminopathies and desmin mutations that cause mostly cardiopathies. Since its characterization until recently, different functions have been attributed to desmin. Here, we use bibliometric tools to evaluate the articles published about desmin and to assess its several putative functions. We identified the most productive authors and the relationships between research groups. We studied the more frequent words among 9734 articles (September 2021) containing "desmin" on the title and abstract, to identify the major research focus. We generated an interactive spreadsheet with the 934 papers that contain "desmin" only on the title that can be used to search and quantify terms in the abstract. We further selected the articles that contained the terms "function" or "role" from the spreadsheet, which we then classified according to type of function, organelle, or tissue involved. Based on the bibliographic analysis, we assess comparatively the putative functions, and we propose an alternative explanation for the desmin function.

Keywords: Desmin; cytoskeleton; intermediate filaments.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Immunofluorescence labeling of chick primary culture myoblasts for desmin (a) and actin (c), and images processed with SRRF for desmin (b) and actin (d). The merged image (e) shows desmin labeled in green and actin labeled in red, compared with the interference contrast image (f) and (g)—the superposition of immuno and contrast. In the inset (h), it is interesting to note how the distribution of the processed image of actin and desmin mostly exclude each other. Scale bars 10 µm. (A color version of this figure is available in the online journal.)
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Number of articles with desmin on title or desmin on title and abstract, compared to the total number of articles on PubMed. (A color version of this figure is available in the online journal.)
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Worldwide distribution of desmin cases in each country relative to the size of the population, based on the LOVD database, with additional information for Brazil. Several countries do not have any cases reported and are left without color. (A color version of this figure is available in the online journal.)
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Diagram showing the number of publications per author and the relationship between authors in the database of articles with “desmin” in title/abstract in PubMed. The size of each author (circle) is proportional to the number of articles from the database we retrieved from PubMed (September 2021) with 9731 articles containing the word “desmin” in the title or abstract (including “skeletin” and excluding the dermatan sulfate “Desmin 370”), and the thickness of the connecting lines to the number of articles in co-authorship. (A color version of this figure is available in the online journal.)
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Diagram showing the most frequent words in the database of articles with “desmin” in title/abstract in PubMed and their relationship. The size of each circle is proportional to the frequency of word from the database we retrieved from PubMed (September 2021) with 9731 articles containing the word “desmin” in the title or abstract (including “skeletin” and excluding the dermatan sulfate “Desmin 370”), and the thickness of the connecting lines to their co-occurrence. Clusters are automatically colored. The overlay represents our interpretation of each cluster characteristic. The yellow words in the center interact with words in all other clusters, and therefore are not classified in a separate group. (A color version of this figure is available in the online journal.)
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Scheme showing the distribution of intermediate filaments in smooth, cardiac and skeletal muscle: D: desmin, V: vimentin, K: cytokeratin, N: nestin, S: synemin, P: paranemin, C: syncoilin, 1: dense body, 2: intercalated disk, 3: neuromuscular junction, 4: perimitochondrial, 5: perinuclear, 6: sarcomere, 7: myotendinous junction, 8: costamere, 9: cytoplasm, 10: desmosome. We do not depict other regions where IF proteins have been described, such as cytoplasm and sarcolemma because these categories are ambiguous. (A color version of this figure is available in the online journal.)

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