title: Heterospecific SNP diversity in humans and rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta).
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Conservation of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) between human and other primates (i.e., heterospecific SNPs) in candidate genes can be used to assess the utility of those organisms as models for human biomedical research.
  
  
  METHODS
  A total of 59,691 heterospecific SNPs in 22 rhesus macaques and 20 humans were analyzed for human trait associations and 4207 heterospecific SNPs biallelic in both taxa were compared for genetic variation.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Variation comparisons at the 4207 SNPs showed that humans were more genetically diverse than rhesus macaques with observed and expected heterozygosities of 0.337 and 0.323 vs. 0.119 and 0.102, and minor allele frequencies of 0.239 and 0.063, respectively. In total, 431 of the 59,691 heterospecific SNPs are reportedly associated with human-specific traits.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  While comparisons between human and rhesus macaque genomes are plausible, functional studies of heterospecific SNPs are necessary to determine whether rhesus macaque alleles are associated with the same phenotypes as their corresponding human alleles.
authors.affiliation: Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Jillian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ng
authors.affiliation: Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.|California National Primate Research Center, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Jessica Satkoski
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Trask
authors.affiliation: Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.|California National Primate Research Center, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
authors.forename: David Glenn
authors.initials: DG
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.affiliation: Molecular Anthropology Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.|California National Primate Research Center, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.|School of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, Arizona State University (ASU) at the West Campus, Glendale, AZ, USA.|Department of Environmental Toxicology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA.
authors.forename: Sree
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kanthaswamy
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005787:Gene Frequency / Q000235:genetics; D014644:Genetic Variation / Q000235:genetics*; D006579:Heterozygote; D006801:Humans; D008253:Macaca mulatta / Q000235:genetics*; D020641:Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide / Q000235:genetics*; D013045:Species Specificity
keywords: Homo sapiens; genomic comparison; non-human primates; orthologs