Accelerated recruitment of new brain development genes into the human genome.

ABSTRACT: How the human brain evolved has attracted tremendous interests for decades. Motivated by case studies of primate-specific genes implicated in brain function, we examined whether or not the young genes, those emerging genome-wide in the lineages specific to the primates or rodents, showed distinct spatial and temporal patterns of transcription compared to old genes, which had existed before primate and rodent split. We found consistent patterns across different sources of expression data: there is a significantly larger proportion of young genes expressed in the fetal or infant brain of humans than in mouse, and more young genes in humans have expression biased toward early developing brains than old genes. Most of these young genes are expressed in the evolutionarily newest part of human b

SUBMITTER: Zhang YE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3196496 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature