A genome-wide screen for noncoding elements important in primate evolution.

ABSTRACT:

Background

A major goal in the study of human evolution is to identify key genetic changes which occurred over the course of primate evolution. According to one school of thought, many such changes are likely to be found in noncoding sequence. An approach to identifying these involves comparing multiple genomes to identify conserved regions with an accelerated substitution rate in a particular lineage. Such acceleration could be the result of positive selection.

Results

Here we develop a likelihood ratio test method to identify such regions. We apply it not only to the human terminal lineage, as has been done in previous studies, but also to a number of other branches in the primate tree. We present the top scoring elements, and compare our results with previous studies. We

SUBMITTER: Bush EC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2242780 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature