Impacts of Neanderthal-Introgressed Sequences on the Landscape of Human Gene Expression.

ABSTRACT: Regulatory variation influencing gene expression is a key contributor to phenotypic diversity, both within and between species. Unfortunately, RNA degrades too rapidly to be recovered from fossil remains, limiting functional genomic insights about our extinct hominin relatives. Many Neanderthal sequences survive in modern humans due to ancient hybridization, providing an opportunity to assess their contributions to transcriptional variation and to test hypotheses about regulatory evolution. We developed a flexible Bayesian statistical approach to quantify allele-specific expression (ASE) in complex RNA-seq datasets. We identified widespread expression differences between Neanderthal and modern human alleles, indicating pervasive cis-regulatory impacts of introgression. Brain regions and te

SUBMITTER: McCoy RC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6219754 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature