Visualizing a Field of Research for the Coronavirus Replication in Humans with Knowledge Mapping: Evidence from Web of Science

BACKGROUND: The outbreak of COVID-19 sweeping the globe in 2020 has caused widespread fear and threatened global health security. Compared to SARS and MERS, COVID-19 also causes severe respiratory diseases and even fatal diseases but have many differences, such as the unidentified gene sequence and replication mechanism. From SARS to MERS, and then to COVID-19, coronaviruses have significant variations in host adaptation, virus evolution, infectivity, spread, and pathogenicity due to its unique replication mechanism. METHODS: A field of research for the coronavirus replication in humans was visualized with a database covering 9177 kinds of literature in Web of Science from 2002 through October 2021 to provide cognitive direction for the epidemic situation of virus infection. Knowledge Mapping by CiteSpace and Bibliometrix Package in R Software was drawn to depict the underlying features of viral replication and changing trends of studies, with these analyses including co-citation, density visualization, keyword clustering, and time zone. RESULTS: The keyword frequencies of "replication," ''infection," and ''spike protein" repeatedly appeared in published papers. Coronavirus can promote or inhibit apoptosis, depending on the balance between viral protein and apoptotic factors. When the living environment of cells is irreversibly damaged by the virus, cells have to start the apoptosis mechanism to prevent the replication, transmission, and spread of the virus. The replication, assembly and transmission of coronavirus can inhibit cells from entering the apoptosis prematurely with the fusion of spike protein and cell receptor in human. CONCLUSION: Our results indicated that "viral infection," spike protein," and "mutation" might be future research hotspots on coronavirus replication in humans. The attention should be paid to the mutations of S protein and these mutants carrying mutations. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text]