The sole name at #1 on the list of scientists seems quite fitting, given his wide public visibility in 2000: J. Craig Venter of Celera Genomics and The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR), Rockville, Maryland. In addition to his highly publicized role in the effort to sequence the human genome, Venter had a hand in seven recent Hot Papers. His labors last year included the paper ranked at #1 on the next page: the most-cited paper of 2000. This report (M.D. Adams, et al., Science) presents the genome sequence of that genetics workhorse, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

Three of Venter's TIGR colleagues also made the list of hot scientists: Steven L. Salzberg, Claire M. Fraser, and Owen White. (Within each tier of the table above, the order of names is determined by total citations to each author's Hot Papers. And in this survey, as in all Science Watch citation studies, every author listed on a paper receives equal citation credit.) Together, the TIGR scientists contributed not only to 2000's citation champ, but to papers providing gene-sequence data on the human malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and the plant Arabidopsis thaliana, among other topics.

The TIGR contingent is not the only collaborative group on this year's list. In the #2 spot, David Botstein and his Stanford University colleague Patrick O. Brown (who's supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute) combined on six Hot Papers—five of them coauthored with the top name in the #3 bracket, Michael B. Eisen, a former Stanford researcher now at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley. The team uses DNA-microarray technology and algorithmic analysis to examine patterns of gene expression. One of their Hot Papers (V.R. Iyer, et al., from Science), is currently at #8 in the Biology Top Ten on page 8 of this issue. Another, published in 2000 (A.A. Alizadeh, et al., Nature), ranked third in citations for the year.

Also sharing the #2 spot is John C. Reed of the Burnham Institute, the scientist who topped this annual ranking for the last two years. Reed makes another strong showing with six Hot Papers on apoptosis. Two of these, discussing mitochondrial control of cell death, were published in 2000.

In the #3 tier, Eric S. Lander of the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research returns to this annual roundup after an absence of three years. Among Lander's five Hot Papers on gene regulation and expression is a report on single-nucleotide polymorphisms in coding regions of human DNA (M. Cargill, et al., Nature Genetics), currently ranked fifth in the Biology Top Ten.

Returning to the list from last year are two collaborators from the Amgen Institute and the University of Toronto: Josef M. Penninger and Tak W. Mak, who both checked in with five Hot Papers (having coauthored three of them) on T-cell activation and other biochemical aspects of immunology. Mak, who discussed his research in an interview last fall (see Science Watch, 11[5]:3-4, September/October 2000), was a coauthor on the paper ranked #14 for the year (A. Hirao, et al., Science). This year, Penninger and Mak are joined on the list by their Amgen colleague, research associate Andrew Wakeham.

Finally, a name new to Science Watch: Antonio Lanzavecchia of the Basel Institute for Immunology, Switzerland, who contributed to five Hot Papers on cellular activity in the immune response, including chemokine-receptor expression on human dendritic cells and T cells.

In general, the physical sciences make a comparatively strong showing on this year's list, as opposed to last year's single entry. (Since this list is based on absolute citation totals, and since life-sciences papers simply tend to be more highly cited, the physical sciences are at a disadvantage here.) Three papers (#15, #17, #18) discuss particle physics or cosmology. The paper ranked at #18 for the year (P. de Bernardis, et al.,Nature), presenting evidence for a flat universe, has already entered the Physics Top Ten and is discussed by correspondent Simon Mitton on page 6 of this issue. That paper is also notable for having been published relatively late in the year; its April 27th publication date was surpassed by only one other of the year's hottest papers, #11, published on May 18th. Thus, these two papers did not have the same time advantage in accumulating citations as that enjoyed by the other reports, most of which appeared in January or February. The most fortunate publication of all in this respect was the January 1st issue of Nucleic Acids Research, which yielded five of 2000's most-cited papers (#2, #6, #7, #19, #21), on assorted protein databases. Time advantage or not, a noteworthy achievement.