Region and Country Trends in the Determination of Coronavirus PDB Protein Structures

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The Covid-19 pandemic provides a nearly unique opportunity to study the international dimensions of scientific research. This is a project that was conducted with undergraduates who used this opportunity to acquire essential research experiences that otherwise are difficult to acquire, given that college teaching laboratories are shut down during the pandemic. We describe an investigation of the national and regional publication patterns of coronavirus protein database (pdb) structures, beginning when the first coronavirus virion pdb structures were published in 2002 to the present. This period comprises three separate coronavirus-induced pandemics, first the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) beginning in 2003, then the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) beginning in 2012, then the current Covid-19 pandemic beginning in 2019. Each of these pandemics is reflected the deposition of pdb structure depositions from a variety of countries. This study investigates the sources of these depositions and relates them to demographic and economic metrics. The United States, the UK, and China lead the world in the number of depositions. Researchers in some countries deposit many more pdb structures than their country metrics would suggest.