Global discovery of primate-specific genes in the human genome.

ABSTRACT: The genomic basis of primate phenotypic uniqueness remains obscure, despite increasing genome and transcriptome sequence data availability. Although factors such as segmental duplications and positive selection have received much attention as potential drivers of primate phenotypes, single-copy primate-specific genes are poorly characterized. To discover such genes genomewide, we screened a catalog of 38,037 human transcriptional units (TUs), compiled from EST and cDNA sequences in conjunction with the FANTOM3 transcriptome project. We identified 131 TUs from transcribed sequences residing within primate-specific insertions in 9-species sequence alignments and outside of segmental duplications. Exons of 120 (92%) of the TUs contained interspersed repeats, indicating that repeat insertions

SUBMITTER: Tay SK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2715485 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature