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An ancient enhancer rapidly evolving in the human lineage promotes neural development and cognitive flexibility

ABSTRACT: An unsolved mystery in biology is how human-specific traits were acquired during evolution. Here, we report that an evolutionary ancient non-coding element—human accelerated region 123 (HAR123)—has undergone rapid evolution specifically in the human lineage and confers human-specific functions. HAR123 is a neural enhancer that promotes the generation of human neuroectoderm and neural progenitor cells by upregulating the transcriptional repressor HIC1. The human and chimpanzee versions of HAR123 exhibit different properties, consistent with HAR123 being selected for new functions since the human-chimpanzee split. To address the in vivo functions of HAR123, we generated HAR123-knockout mice, which exhibit a specific defect in “re-learning.” Together, our study supports a model in which HAR123 has rapidly evolved in the human lineage to influence neural generation and, ultimately, cognitive flexibility.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE249252 | GEO | 2025/07/15

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Human Accelerated Regions (HARs) are highly conserved across species but exhibit a significant excess of human-specific sequence changes, suggesting they may have gained novel functions in human evolution. HARs include gene regulatory elements with human-specific activity and have been implicated in the evolution of the human brain. However, our understanding of how HARs contributed to uniquely human features of the brain is hindered by a lack of insight into the genes and pathways that HARs regulate. It is unknown whether HARs acted by altering the expression of gene targets conserved between HARs and their chimpanzee orthologs or by gaining new gene targets in human, a mechanism termed enhancer hijacking. We generated a high-resolution map of chromatin interactions for 1,590 HARs and their orthologs in human and chimpanzee neural stem cells (NSCs) to comprehensively identify gene targets in both species. HARs and their chimpanzee orthologs targeted a conserved set of 2,963 genes enriched for neurodevelopmental processes including neurogenesis and synaptic transmission. Changes in HAR enhancer activity were correlated with changes in conserved gene target expression. Conserved targets were enriched among genes differentially expressed between human and chimpanzee NSCs or between human and non-human primate developing and adult brain. Species-specific HAR gene targets did not converge on known biological functions and were not significantly enriched among differentially expressed genes, suggesting that most HARs did not alter gene expression via enhancer hijacking. HAR gene targets, including differentially expressed targets, also showed cell type-specific expression patterns in the developing human brain, notably in outer radial glia, which are hypothesized to contribute to human cortical expansion. Our findings support that HARs influenced human brain evolution by altering the expression of a conserved set of gene targets and provide the means to functionally link HARs with novel human brain features.

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An ancient enhancer rapidly evolving in the human lineage promotes neural development and cognitive flexibility

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