Genome sequencing

Reading DNA and RNA faster and more cheaply, down to single cells.

The United States leads genome sequencing research, with 33.6% of the 10% most cited papers published 2021–2025; China is second with 27.6%.

Added 14 October 2026. Its top papers were checked for relevance by AI, but its keywords and topic list have not yet been reviewed by hand.

FirstUnited States33.6%

SecondChina27.6%

1.2×lead, by share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025

Highlight a country

Standings

1USUnited States33.6%2CNChina27.6%3GBUnited Kingdom5.0%4DEGermany4.7%5AUAustralia3.9%6CHSwitzerland2.0%7–9KRSouth Korea1.6%7–9CACanada1.6%7–9SESweden1.5%10–12ESSpain1.4%

Share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025; 625 papers. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Year by year

Share of the 10% most cited papers published in each year. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Inside the field

Always the top 10%Pilot

Each paper sorted into one sub-area by an AI model reading its title and abstract, then credited as usual. On 200 hand-labelled papers it chose the same sub-area, or a defensible second, 92% of the time.

Sub-area	Papers	First	Second	Third
Single-cell RNA-seq analysis methods and AI models	159	USUnited States38.1%	CNChina27.5%	DEGermany4.8%
Cancer and tumour microenvironment	96	CNChina58.7%	USUnited States18.0%	GBUnited Kingdom3.4%
Spatial transcriptomics	84	USUnited States40.7%	CNChina28.1%	DEGermany5.0%
Cell atlases of tissues, development and non-cancer disease	78	USUnited States39.4%	CNChina18.6%	GBUnited Kingdom12.3%
Long-read and nanopore sequencing	76	USUnited States25.6%	AUAustralia11.6%	CNChina8.2%
Genome assembly, short-read sequencing and bioinformatics	75	USUnited States25.4%	CNChina18.7%	AUAustralia7.2%
Single-cell multi-omics and chromatin accessibility	25	USUnited States64.3%	CNChina21.4%	SESweden4.5%

Share of each sub-area's papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Earlier and recent

The same top 10%, split into 2021–2023 and 2024–2025.

FallingRising2021–20232024–2025Change

USUnited States 36.7%29.6%−7.0 pts

CNChina 27.4%27.9%+0.6 pts

GBUnited Kingdom 5.2%4.8%−0.3 pts

DEGermany 4.6%4.7%+0.1 pts

AUAustralia 3.3%4.8%+1.5 pts

CHSwitzerland 1.4%2.9%+1.5 pts

KRSouth Korea 1.5%1.9%+0.4 pts

CACanada 1.0%2.3%+1.4 pts

Greyed rows rest on fewer than five papers of credit in one period.

Share of the 10% most cited papers: 354 papers in 2021–2023, 271 in 2024–2025. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

2026 so far: a different count

Not the most cited papers: every 2026 paper matched so far (1,153), and a paper counts in full for each country on it. This year's papers are too new to rank by citations, so these shares cannot be compared with the ones above.

CNChina39.8%of 2026 papers have an author here
USUnited States26.6%of 2026 papers have an author here
DEGermany6.7%of 2026 papers have an author here
GBUnited Kingdom5.8%of 2026 papers have an author here
KRSouth Korea3.6%of 2026 papers have an author here

Who cites the top papers

How much more often a country's top papers are cited from home than its size predicts. Expected is the country's share of all papers in the field; the bar is the excess, in percentage points. Home citers include authors citing their own earlier work.

HomeExpectedExcess

USUnited States 41.9%32.6%+9.3

CNChina 59.5%36.1%+23.4

Based on up to 100 of each country's most cited single-country papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Behind the share

Institutions with the most credit

1USHarvard University1.9%
2USBroad InstituteNon-profit1.4%
3CNPeking University1.3%
4USYale University1.1%
5USUniversity of California, Irvine1.1%
6GBWellcome Sanger InstituteNon-profit1.0%
7CNZhejiang University0.9%
8USAllen Institute for Brain ScienceResearch facility0.9%
9AUThe University of Melbourne0.9%
10USStanford University0.8%

Share of the top 10%. Institutions across all 45 technologies

Who does the work

Sector	All	US	CN	GB
Universities	59.3%	61.0%	61.1%	46.0%
Hospitals	13.7%	13.7%	21.9%	6.6%
Research facilities	13.3%	12.2%	6.9%	20.2%
Non-profits	5.1%	5.9%	1.6%	22.0%

Share of credit by type of institution, overall and for the three leading countries.

Across borders

36.8% of the top 10% have authors in more than one country.

CNUSChina with United States40
DEUSGermany with United States34
GBUSUnited Kingdom with United States28
DEGBGermany with United Kingdom19
CAUSCanada with United States19

Most frequent pairings, by number of shared papers.

The papers behind the numbers

The five most cited papers this definition catches. If one looks out of place, the definition needs work.

Inference and analysis of cell-cell communication using CellChat
Nature Communications, 2021TWUS
8,262citations
Dictionary learning for integrative, multimodal and scalable single-cell analysis
Nature Biotechnology, 2023US
5,468citations
Towards complete and error-free genome assemblies of all vertebrate species
Nature, 2021ATAUBECHCNDE
3,108citations
Nanopore sequencing technology, bioinformatics and applications
Nature Biotechnology, 2021US
1,755citations
A single-cell and spatially resolved atlas of human breast cancers
Nature Genetics, 2021AUCNFRSESGUS
1,748citations

How this technology is defined

A paper counts if its title or abstract matches the search below. Articles in core journals and proceedings only; retracted papers are excluded.

"next-generation sequencing" OR "long-read sequencing" OR "nanopore sequencing" OR "single-cell sequencing" OR "single-cell RNA sequencing" OR "whole-genome sequencing"

and its main topic in OpenAlex is one of: Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics; Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies. The topic check removes papers that only mention the technology.

Papers matched, 2021–2025: 6,217
In the top 10%: 625
In the top 1%: 65
Countries with credit: 59
Credit with no known country: 2.2%

Every one of the 810 most cited papers was checked for relevance; 19 were left out as not about genome sequencing

The most cited of those left out:

FlyBase: updates to the Drosophila genes and genomes database412 citations
Spatial mapping of protein composition and tissue organization: a primer for multiplexed antibody-based imaging312 citations
Phylogenomic approaches to detecting and characterizing introgression216 citations
PANNZER —A practical tool for protein function prediction195 citations
Integration, exploration, and analysis of high‐dimensional single‐cell cytometry data using Spectre168 citations
A census of the lung: CellCards from LungMAP163 citations
Identification of cell types in multiplexed in situ images by combining protein expression and spatial information using CELESTA108 citations
Extending the landscape of omics technologies by pathomics76 citations
Comparative analysis of dimension reduction methods for cytometry by time-of-flight data45 citations
PARNAS: Objectively Selecting the Most Representative Taxa on a Phylogeny45 citations
Optimizing performance of parallel computing platforms for large-scale genome data analysis40 citations
Redefining the high variable genes by optimized LOESS regression with positive ratio34 citations

Definition version 0.5, pilot. It is a plain text file: copy it, change it, rerun it.

Read the method