ABSTRACT
This study aims to examine the international publication patterns of coronavirus protein database (PDB) structures, beginning when the first coronavirus virion PDB structures were published in 2002 to the present (2022). Sources of these depositions were extracted from their publications and used as indicators of how countries reacted to the pandemic through research output and were then compared to demographic and economic metrics. Of the approximately 40 countries examined, the United States, United Kingdom, and China had the highest number of proteins, demonstrating research productivity centeredness in highly developed countries. These countries all displayed a peak in protein depositions in 2020 or 2021, and slowed down in 2022 likely due to the peaking of the pandemic and a slowing necessity of response. Population size was found to contribute little to no factor in determining the number of coronavirus protein depositions while higher economic status measured by the GDP per capita did correlate with higher numbers of protein depositions (Jaffe et al, 2020). The number of confirmed Covid-19 cases showed a positive association with the number of PDB depositions per country, specifically in the United States. Furthermore, South Africa and Brazil, despite not being in the top 10 research-producing countries, had a high number of cases and PDB depositions, suggesting the strong impact of confirmed cases on coronavirus research output (Normile, 2022). This study's measure of how countries' economic status, population, and confirmed coronavirus cases affects their responses in terms of coronavirus protein research output suggests an unequal distribution in publication origins, which poses a challenge to global pandemic response coordination. This study continues an earlier study presented at the PDB50 - ASBMB on-line meeting, on May 4- 5, 2021 by Janet Gonzalez, Matthew K. McDevitt, David Roman, & Manfred Philipp. NA.Copyright © 2023 The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.