Regional patterns of gene expression in human and chimpanzee brains.
We have analyzed gene expression in various brain regions of humans and chimpanzees. Within both human and chimpanzee individuals, the transcriptomes of the cerebral cortex are very similar to each other and differ more between individuals than among regions within an individual. In contrast, the transcriptomes of the cerebral cortex, the caudate nucleus, and the cerebellum differ substantially from each other. Between humans and chimpanzees, 10% of genes differ in their expression in at least one region of the brain. The majority of these expression differences are shared among all brain regions. Whereas genes encoding proteins involved in signal transduction and cell differentiation differ significantly between brain regions within individuals, no such pattern is seen between the species. However, a subset of genes that show expression differences between humans and chimpanzees are distributed nonrandomly across the genome. Furthermore, genes that show an elevated expression level in humans are statistically significantly enriched in regions that are recently duplicated in humans.
Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. khaitovich@eva.mpg.de
Philipp
P
Khaitovich
Bjoern
B
Muetzel
Xinwei
X
She
Michael
M
Lachmann
Ines
I
Hellmann
Janko
J
Dietzsch
Stephan
S
Steigele
Hong-Hai
HH
Do
Gunter
G
Weiss
Wolfgang
W
Enard
Florian
F
Heissig
Thomas
T
Arendt
Kay
K
Nieselt-Struwe
Evan E
EE
Eichler
Svante
S
Pääbo
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D015870:Gene Expression; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D015894:Genome, Human; D006801:Humans; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D002679:Pan troglodytes / Q000235:genetics*; D013045:Species Specificity; D014158:Transcription, Genetic