Comparative Serum Challenges Show Divergent Patterns of Gene Expression and Open Chromatin in Human and Chimpanzee.

ABSTRACT: Humans experience higher rates of age-associated diseases than our closest living evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees. Environmental factors can explain many of these increases in disease risk, but species-specific genetic changes can also play a role. Alleles that confer increased disease susceptibility later in life can persist in a population in the absence of selective pressure if those changes confer positive adaptation early in life. One age-associated disease that disproportionately affects humans compared with chimpanzees is epithelial cancer. Here, we explored genetic differences between humans and chimpanzees in a well-defined experimental assay that mimics gene expression changes that happen during cancer progression: A fibroblast serum challenge. We used this assay with fibrobl

SUBMITTER: Pizzollo J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5848805 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature